I used to be traumatized by Nightmares

 When I was a child I would wake screaming incoherently from nightmares.

Today at 51 almost 52 years of age. I woke with a wordless scream from a nightmare in which I was trying to write down the information provided to me by my mother and her two sisters before my conscious mind realized they were all dead. I was making a list of names and what happened to them as the darkness took the information from my hands reducing it to mindless gibberish and bring back childhood and repressed memory of dread of chaos.

When I was still;l young and living at a place called Shady Dell Trail in an antebellum-style house in an old neighborhood of Knoxville. Where the urban myths were that some of the houses had once belonged to slave owners who tortured and killed their slaves. I lived in a corner room where I hoarded Oreos and milk and hid from the darkness and chaos that lingered and haunted the fringes of my mind.

My worst nightmare at the time (or at least as i remember it- I wasn't a writer yet) was of chaos. A Scribble of Madness that surrounded the idea of my angry mother who would point at me and my father having to slap me awake because I would come to, incoherently screaming in sheer terror.

My mtoehr loved me and provided me with literature, music, and a love of art.

I have no memories of her holding me, nor taking care of me when I was sick or when I would wake from nightmares.

Now my mother is dead and my father has lost his mind (or- at least, a good deal of it) There is no one to tell save my brother who in my childhood was sleeping in the basement a world away from me and right now I don't understand why he was down there. Perhaps he will be able to explain it to me when he wakes up.

It's 6am. I am seeking the comfort of Oreos and Milk as I have awakened to an empty house that belonged to my mother who is now dead and cannot share the secrets of a past that might be best forgotten if I could only stop remembering it in my dreams.

notes: In the dream, I painted a picture of someone who looked like Errol Flyn but according to my mother was actually her father. my grandfather of whom I have never met. In the dream, I was painting him with black oil paint from an old 35mm film canister which I held in my right hand whilst painting with my left. I would wet the brush with my lips. This might have a connection to a childhood story of my brother once feeding me wall paint in South Africa when I was three or four. 

Did that actually happen? My parents and Sister told the story a lot. Did I suffer some kjind of blood poisoning? Trauma once the adults realized that my brother had done this to me?

I painted his portrait onto the side of a brown or white paper bag. Somehow this was a Crux to the dream that would keep reality from realizing that I was changing the past or at least trying to.

it didn't work. 

I had watched a video about Terminator The Rise of the Machines which has a semi-eligible plot about how you cannot change the past...? It's a terrible movie.

Once, I was presented via Facebook with the hypothetical RESET Button MEME.

Most people commented about how they desired somekind of Reset to their lives.

I declared to all (including those who weren't on Facebook)  that I would slap that button silly.

This morning, I still would.