Alaras

I have suffered from chronic insomnia for many years. I have alluded to the cause of this, which has nothing to do with any sort of bodily condition or health problem. I just have nightmares so horrific and disturbing that I barely sleep except when completely exhausted, and even then, I don’t usually stay asleep for very long. My nightmares provoke me to avoid sleeping as much as possible, leaving me constantly tired. The few nights I do sleep are dreamless, and I wake up even wearier than when I fell asleep. While I usually have enough energy to pay attention in class and possibly get assignments done, I usually have little strength for much beyond that. These nightmares have haunted me for years, but I have only been able to recall them clearly since August, 2008. I have not described them in detail as of yet, and since my weakness got to the point where I was relegated to sleeping for the entire day before I sat down to write this, I have experienced it repeatedly over the past 36 hours or so, and it is thus still fresh in my mind.
My nightmares, as I touched upon in a previous entry, follow a pattern. I start off in a pitch-black area. I can’t see or feel anything in this place, beyond Debra’s laughter. Though I am not bound or obstructed in any way, I cannot move from where I am, though I can flail about with my arms. After what feels like about five minutes, I hear voices. They belong to former classmates, my siblings, and the parents of said classmates. I still can’t see any of them, and if I reach out, I grasp nothing but air. They whisper, and much of it is incoherent at first. Gradually, I can recognize words like “monster”, “freak”, “psycho”, “abomination”, “retard”, “worthless”, “crazy”, and other variations within those themes. The voices of the parents eventually get a bit louder. I begin to hear things like “That freak doesn’t belong anywhere near my children,” “He should be sent away,” “He isn’t human,” and many more. After that, all the voices get louder, and I can’t hear anything they’re saying. There are so many of them, all in harsh and spiteful tones, that the incoherent exclamations are as oppressive as the sterile darkness I find myself in, unable to even identify if I am standing, lying flat, or even in physical contact with any solid objects. Then there’s a bright flash of light, and I close my eyes. When I reopen them, I’m in a harshly-lit room, filled with bright fluorescents, and I’m strapped down to a bed. Debra is the only one in the room, and I can see various medical and torture instruments, as well as several weapons, neatly arranged on a white-colored table located next to her. She takes one of them, often starting with what appear to be a set of brass knuckles, and begins to punch my bound torso. I’m so tightly bound to the bed that I can’t even shift enough for it to be considered writhing. All I can do is endure the violence, as she says “They’re absolutely right, you are a worthless piece of shit. You’re nothing more than a monster, a freak that I should have abandoned. I hope this kills you, but monsters like you don’t die that easily. You’d better kill yourself after this, because I’ll do worse than this if you’re still alive when I come back!” She continues to punch me all over with those brass knuckles, then removes them after what feels like ten minutes – though it simultaneously feels as though it were several hours. By this point, my entire body is numb. I can’t even feel pain anymore. She then takes what appears to be a machete with a curved silicone handle from the same table she got the knuckles from. She makes a small motion with her finger on the base of the knife, and I hear a faint humming sound. The handle has a motor in it to make the blade vibrate rapidly. She brings it to my left cheek, barely even touching it, and I feel blood begin to trickle from the cut. She removes a sheet that was previously covering my bound body. I look down, and I see large bruises all over, and words carved upside-down on my torso, so that when I looked down, I could easily see that they read “You deserve so much worse, monster!” The vibrating knife is touched to the center of my chest, then my abdomen, and finally is used to sever my genitals. My chest and abdomen are now bleeding rather heavily, as is my groin, yet through all this, I still feel nothing. Finally, people in black hooded robes open a door behind me, which I cannot see, and file in one by one, twelve of them in all. I cannot see any of their faces, or even identify their gender. They say nothing, just point and laugh at my naked, bound, and bleeding body. One of them takes a small vial out of his/her pocket, opens it, and pours it on my groin. I see smoke and smell something burning, and as I direct my gaze down there, my groin has been cauterized to the point where it could be considered third-degree burns. They then file out silently, and I hear the door close behind them. Debra speaks again, with a smile that doesn’t show in her eyes, and in a high-pitched tone of voice she always uses as a front. She says “I love you.” This is where it can really be different each night, at least somewhat different. Some nights, I feel a small pinch in my neck, turn my gaze downward, and find that my neck’s bleeding in time with my pulse, and she’s licking my blood off her fingernail, which she used to pierce the pulmonary artery in my neck. Other times, it feels like she traced her nails around the circumference of my neck. I gaze downward to find myself decapitated. One time, I heard the click of a gun’s safety being removed, then a cool metallic object is pressed against my ear. I never hear her pull the trigger, but I hear a soft “bang”, then everything goes white. No matter how I’m killed, she is the one who kills me, and she always prefaces it with that line. After that, I wake up, shaken and unable to go back to sleep. Even writing about it now speeds up my heart rate and sends chills down my spine. I wish I could have a good night’s sleep for once, never to experience these visions again. Unfortunately, it only grows worse over time.

I was five years old when my first coherent memories take place. I was in kindergarten at the time, and by then, I had no opportunities to socialize, my disability had resulted in the vast majority of the community keeping their children away, and I wasn’t welcome anywhere. Back then, I had no idea. It wasn’t my choice. It was outside my control. Both parents worked full-time, and she had to come in to pick me up. Another kid had hit me, and I bit them in retaliation. I was sitting outside the principal’s office, where the parent of the kid who started it said “That monster has no place in a public school! Why can’t he be shipped off to Pilgrim?” (Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, the nearest inpatient facility for the mentally ill) or something to that effect. The walls were paper-thin, and I heard every word of it. This was my beginning as a monster, the beginning of my abuse, and the beginning of the end of my sense of identity. Over the short years I’ve lived, I spent most of it alone or in hostile company. No friends, few acquaintances, and poor relations with most of my family, but I managed. Then again, I also somehow managed to go 15 years barely smiling, if at all. This memoir’s just my attempt to make sense of all of this, though I have yet to find any answers.

In the months leading up to the decision to undertake this project, I asked myself all sorts of questions. Questions like “What will I write about?” “How should I structure it?” “How can I do this and remain a full-time student?” “What if someone decides to call me a liar and attack me for what I write?” “What if it’s a bigger success than I can afford, and I lose my eligibility for Medicaid, which I need to ensure I have health insurance for the foreseeable future?” I decided, in the end, to make this memoir a collection of memories and reflections. Whatever form those reflections take, they are still my memories, and they’re the only thing of any worth that I have in this world. From life growing up with my mother, to my various kinds of depression, from life in the closet to my almost-two-year relationship with a girl I no longer even speak to, I decided to reflect on all of it, even the parts I’d rather not admit to. This is a result of that decision. I’ll discuss being autistic, being viewed as a monster, and adapting my internal perceptions to suit that role. I’ll talk about exactly what it’s like to lose even your ability to think in the first person, when those around you choose to ignore your pain and twist the knives you’ve been stabbed with. It won’t be pretty, except for the wording, and the details will be only as generous as my memory allows, but this was only my attempt to understand and survive. If not even my words can do this for me, then nothing will. After all, it isn’t as though I can go back and view these events and live these things a second time. Once it’s done, it’s done, but I can think back to then, think of what happened, and go from there. So many have told me to stop thinking about the past, to move on and forgive. I can’t do that, not yet. I can never forgive what was done to me by my mother (who will heretofore be referred to only as Debra), and never will. I can never forget, but maybe I can move on after this. Maybe I, too, can find some solace in writing this memoir, as many others have sought through the written word, a curious absolution that we must beg from ourselves.
I resolved all the major issues other than those regarding writing and publishing this work, and so I began writing with a reflection on anonymous sex. Rather pointless, but it got me in the mood to write more, and helped prepare me for facing my darker memories by making it a process. The contents of these memories, according to some I’ve told part of the story to, are not just difficult to believe, but so shocking that one’s first impression is that people aren’t capable of doing what was done to me. After all, few would believe a mother capable of encouraging her son to kill himself, or of prioritizing her personal wealth over EVERYTHING else. It just doesn’t seem right. It’s more common than anybody would ever admit, and the fact is that my story is NOT unique, is NOT an isolated case. It’s a trend that existed long before my memories begin, and will continue, sadly, long after I am dead and my memory forgotten. Children will continue to be despised for differences they never wanted, and they will be blamed for being attacked, as though it was their fault that they were born as they were. In the end, that’s why I’m writing this. I don’t want others to experience what I have, and I hope that people will learn from not only my mistakes, but my pain as well.