The dreams and the truth

I’ve seen a dream, in it I was a baby. My father worked as a doorman, and he held me – naked, wrapped loosely in a brown rug. He pressed me to his right shoulder with one hand, with the other hand he opened the door to the people entering the building. He’d turn to show people the way, and the closing door would strike the baby (me) into her forehead. The baby wouldn’t cry, but her forehead became bloody. My father didn’t notice, he kept opening the door to other people. I observed the scene and decided to go find my mother, find out why she left me (baby) with the father – he didn’t take good care of me. I found her, she said this is MY baby, of course he will take care of her, because he will love her just like he loved me. I wondered why she didn’t take care of the baby herself. She said, she had things to do, she was too busy. I ran back to my father. He kept opening the door, the baby on his shoulder was barely covered by the rug, blood was streaming down her face. She looked up at me, with very serious eyes, quietly. She didn’t cry. I woke up.

I went to write down the dream, but when I got to the paper and pen, I forgot what I wanted to do. I remembered the dream again, when biking to work, and was struck by the fact that the baby’s right side of the forehead was bloody – that’s exactly where I have a scar and a lump on my forehead – one that I had as long as I remember myself, one that nobody in the family could give me an explanation of how I got it. My mom only said that I got it when I was very young, that I probably fell out of the stroller a lot. Fell out face down??? I couldn’t believe it. I pressed, she said she couldn’t remember.

How much do our dreams tell us? How much can we trust them to be true, how much are they simply a yearning to get at the truth? I won’t know. I probably won’t ever find out where my scar came from. I can only keep collecting my own stories – dreams, daydreams, body memories from panic attacks, drawings, journaling, therapy session recollections. Maybe one day they will all fall into a certain logic, maybe they won’t. I’ll keep collecting them, I’ll keep hoping to make sense of it all. I’ll keep hoping, to remember. Simply to remember, for real. Just like other people remember their birthday parties. Each memory that comes to me, I cherish, I write it down, for the fear of forgetting it again. Piece by piece, my childhood is coming back to me.