Hi!

I was curious if anyone else has had experiences where a formerly repressed memory is remembered, and how you cope.

I experienced the first when I was in therapy about eight years ago.  I lived on a small ranch with my dad's family growing up, and was often bouncing around between 12 different family members depending on who could watch me.  Often times, it was my dad's brother Larry who was a meth user and budding sociopath.  

I always knew Larry liked to tease me.  For thirty years, my worst memories as a child were often with him.  My childhood started with him destroying my toys and mild teasing, and ended with him killing my pets and wearing masks so he could chase me around with a hunting knife.  I've always had these memories.  Over the years, several cats, dogs, and even a horse died mysteriously.  Usually by stray shotgun blast or stabbing.  Once a bunch of kittens froze to death after my uncle told me to spray them with a hose the night before.

Fast forward to my mid-30s and, during therapy, remembered a few things I had repressed.  Most notably, how my uncle would hold my head over an empty paint bucket of kittens, fill it with water until I could hear their combined gargled screams for air, and then smash them to death with the end of a baseball bat.  

I kind of lost it and was soon fired by my therapist and forced to come off my meds cold turkey.  I'm just realizing that I never dealt with this because I went back to drinking while coming off the meds and didn't start to attempt quitting until last year.

This October, an aunt came to visit and brought the uncle's wife.  This poor woman deserves her own post, she is a shell of a human after being married to a monster for over twenty years.  She needs a therapist, but refuses, so she uses me every few years.

During our two hour lunch, she wedged something loose and I remembered a time when I was young and tripped into a fireplace, my hands grabbing the metal wood rack and gripping it tightly because of shock, and my uncle "saving the day" by pulling me out.  

The part I forgot and remembered at that lunch was my uncle swept my feet while I was warming my hands at the fire.  I'm pretty sure death threats if I told followed, but can't be sure.  My last death threat from him was when I was twenty, so I can't discount it.  

I'm pretty sure him "saving me" is what lead to him being left alone with me so much.  Something else happened somewhere because I was never left alone with him after a certain point, but I don't know what.  That family policy has always been "we don't talk about those things".  

So that is my experience with repressed memories.  Honestly, I don't want to dig deeper.  The most recent is still fucking with me because I can see how that one lie, that I fell in and he saved me, gave him a lot more time to privately perform his experiments. 

Have any of you had experiences in this realm before?