I keep thinking about the nightmare that led me to the secret room. 

I was in the house that I have dreamt about since I was a teenager, that I have come to believe is a metaphor for my mind/soul. It is sprawling and disorienting- staircases that go nowhere, endless closed doors in long, ominous hallways. Rooms with no ceiling, rooms with live trees inside, rooms soaked in fetid water.

In this nightmare, I walked down to the basement, and in the corner was a rough wooden door, so small I had to duck to cross the threshold. In the tiny, filthy, cement-walled room was an old metal cot that was just rusty springs with a fairly large steamer trunk next to it. 

When I stepped forward and my foot accidentally brushed the edge of the trunk, I suddenly realized I was barefoot. I could feel the electricity of the worn leather rocket through my toes, and my whole body recoiled from the trunk as if it was a threat. 

There was a tiny window positioned near the ceiling that was covered in a layer of grime and filth that made it almost opaque. The slimmest slice of sun crept across the gritty cement floor, and seeing the dim light made me feel instantly, strangely trapped.

On the opposite wall, there was another door- smaller, rougher. Behind it, there was a set of about a dozen uneven cement steps, very steep and sharp, thick with the smell of mildew and rot. They felt wet on my bare feet, and the moment I got to the bottom, my heart leapt in panic. 

This was a bad place. This was evil.

At that very moment, I spun around to see the door slamming shut, the entire door vibrating on its frame from the force. I ran to the door and desperately tried to wrench it open, screaming at the top of my lungs. 

it was coming, it was coming, this is where it came to hurt me, it was coming now, there was no escape, there was never any escape

“Daddy!” I wailed as the doorknob came off in my hand. I thrust my arm through the hole and clawed desperately at the air, knowing that no one could hear me this far away. No one was coming. I was all alone.

When I woke up in terror, still in the Grey Space between worlds, I slipped into meditation.

Show me this place, I whispered. I wasn’t awake enough to question how I knew this place was real, or what caused me to ask to have it revealed. Many strange things happen in the Grey Space, and I trust I am safe enough to chase shadows. 

Most of the time, anyway.

The room began to clarify again inside my mind, this time with that surreal reality that only meditation landscapes can conjure. I saw that the floor under the rusty cot was spattered with blood, and my stomach twisted. 

This is why I’d come back, I could see now. I needed to know it all if I was going to ever move on, if I was ever going to heal.

I opened the trunk…

and I was inside.

It was startling, borderline horrifying, to see a form of myself inside that trunk, though seeing strange nonsensical nightmare images in meditation was now par for the course at this point. It was much more disturbing when I saw the state of her, crammed like a corpse inside this trunk. 

She was naked, emaciated, filthy, her hair hanging in matted clumps on her head. Her entire body was riddled with bruises, caked in blood. When I reached out to touch her, she started to scream.

“Please, please,” she begged, sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh please, I’ll behave, I’ll be quiet, I’ll be good, I’ll do anything, please…”

I tried to gently shush her, but she began to shake uncontrollably, curling her knees tighter against her chest. Her thighs were shiny and tight with dried blood, the edges of it flaking off like old paint. I felt a terror unfolding inside of me, unable to understand or process what I was seeing. The part of me that was rational tried to dismiss it. Another nightmare, another delusion. 

But.

I called for my ancient and limited time lover, unsure of what else I should do. When he showed up, he never said a word. He pulled a shining white sheet from out of nowhere, quietly reaching into the trunk to wrap the sheet around her (me?). 

He lifted her into his arms and cradled her like a baby, gently shushing her sobs, and she shuddered silently into his embrace. He looked at me with dark, pained contemplation, and suddenly, we were back in the field that had become the safest place for my soul. A place that I still use when I don’t know where else to go.

After that, everything started to change. My marriage began to unravel as I dug deep to fix myself, to heal the girl in the trunk. Whether it was real or just a metaphor, I knew it was shown to me for a significant reason. It made me realize how ravaged, how ugly, how broken I really was.

Finding her was the beginning of my new life, but I think that in a lot of ways, I abandoned really dealing with that once my relationship with someone else in real life started to bloom. He helped me to reclaim a part of myself that I thought was dead, but he was also a temporary vacation from true growth and change. I once called him a lighthouse for a lost soul, because he brought me back to shore in so many ways. He resurrected me.

But that wasn’t a healthy relationship either.

And now, here I am.

Dealing with the beach house is one thing. You cannot imagine how many times I have stood at the side of that bed and watched myself be ruined, something that a human being wouldn’t even have survived. Something I don’t think that part of me did survive. Something so violent, so ugly that I wouldn’t even wish for anyone else to even see it with their own eyes. It is beyond foul. It has broken so many people forced to witness the carnage.

But these days, I can’t stop thinking about the girl in the trunk in the basement with a basement. 

Is she the reason I still can’t connect with others? I have been thinking so much about my issues with intimacy, my inability to be vulnerable, my reaction of revulsion to kindness or empathy towards me. I even recoil from platonic friendships. 

The best relationship I’ve ever had was with someone I knew I’d never be with, that had no future. Only then was I even remotely open and honest about who I really am. People that try to love me learn so little about me. 

Is there any hope for me opening my heart to anyone, truly? After so many times of trying to be vulnerable, to allow intimacy, only to have it violently violated… how many times do I allow that? What is it about me that encourages such disregard of my vulnerability?

Something about me is broken. Can it be healed?