Writing on the walls

Is this what security feels like?

I’m in the bustling kitchen of a house party—loud and filled with chatter, hands filled with cups, cups filled with spirits. Everyone around me is pre-gaming, mingling with each other before they depart for some music festival—but instead of socializing with the rest of the group, I’m exploring the spacious walk-in pantry, stock-piled with all the food I’d ever wish for. To be honest, I can’t remember how I found myself in here, but a girl’s got to eat. I mean, I don’t drink—and I’m not sure if joining the rest of ‘em will feed me what I need.

“Time to go!” I hear a voice yell out.

They’re leaving for the festival, and I reluctantly follow the large group out the back door, although I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know where the festival is. I don’t know what the festival is. I don’t even know if I need a ticket to get in. Still, I move with the rest of the crowd, or I am moved by it—like a flock of sheep or a school of fish—as we walk down a sidewalk lit up by street lamps.

Clementine Morrigan

spots me in the crowd. She calls out to me and quickly hands me a festival ticket as she passes by. I look down at the piece of paper in my hand.

“ALL-ACCESS PASS,” it reads in boldface type.

I got my ticket. It was gifted, even.

The warmth of belonging fills my body. I feel safe. Welcome.

Is this what security feels like?

As we arrive at the venue, I let myself trail behind a bit and watch the crowd ahead of me funnel into the festival, one by one. When it’s my turn to approach the security guard working the door, I show him my ticket. He squints his eyes and inspects it.

“This ticket isn’t valid,” he informs me.

“That can’t be right,” I counter. It can’t be.

The ticket was a gift from someone I trust. I urge him to reinspect it.

“There must have been a mix up,” security tells me. “I can’t let you in.”

The young security guard is striking—he’s tall, handsome, my age, and the kind of guy I’d normally like. The kind of guy who might normally like me, too, under any other circumstances. So, I try to bargain with him a little bit. “All of my friends are in there already. I’m supposed to be with them. Can’t you make an exception?” I bat my eyes. I’ve come all this way. I don’t want it to all be for nothing. I consider my other options. I toy with the idea of sneaking in, even, if all else fails. Sneaking in. I try once more; “Can’t you let me in?”

“I know who your father is,” his tone changes suddenly. Rage hardens his eyes.

“Do you really want to be like him?” he pushes, almost taunting me, almost a threat.

My face pales. How does he know who I am? And what is he implying?

Do I want to be like him? Do I want to enter without a ticket? Do I?

My father was a man who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. A man who thought he could do whatever he wanted—enter wherever he wanted—whenever he wanted, no permission necessary. No ticket necessary. Is that who I’ve become? What makes me think I deserve entry without an official ticket? What makes me above the law? Not just the laws of the land, but the laws of the universe? As much as I rage against it, I’m not.

And I’m not allowed in.

“How did you know?” I ask the security guard.

How did this stranger know my family of origin?

He explains to me that my father was his teacher back in high school. (Yes, my father was once a high school teacher.) He describes in detail how my father ruined him in his own way, merely as his teacher. How he cut down his self-esteem, chipped away at it day by day, leaving him forever scarred. We are the same, I think to myself. Yet he looks at me like a skittish animal, concerned I have the potential to wreak the same exact havoc, to cause the same damage, or worse. He is afraid of me. Yet beneath the layers of fear, rage, and suspicion, I can still sense his empathy. He’s not going to shame me. He’s just being cautious. He’s just protecting himself—and perhaps me, too.

He’s the doorkeeper. He’s not going to let me in until I’m ready—until I’m officially ready. He’s not going to let me sneak in. He’s not going to ever let me become him.

Is this what security feels like?

A limit. A boundary. A “no” for my own good.

Security denies me entry into the festival.

So, I shrink past the security guard’s velvet rope barrier, and instead of turning right and sneaking into the festival, I abide by the rules. I turn left instead. I wave goodbye to the handsome security guard as I walk down a new path, leading into unknown territory. Before I know it, I find myself in a crowded house once again. Similar to the house I began the night in, there is a party happening. But there’s something distinct about this house—I recognize it.

It’s my father’s house.

I think about turning back, but my own morbid curiosity beckons me into the party. I need to know what’s happening in there. With trepidation, I wander into my father’s bedroom, the same bedroom I wandered into all those years ago, the same bedroom all those wretched atrocities occurred—but now, I see it bustling with people. Tons of people. Friendly faces having a grand old time, laughing, drinking, chatting. It’s a celebration. A vastly different scene. A new universe entirely. It’s astonishing to me that these people have dared to take over the house and throw a party. I love it. I love it so much. I love it so much that I want to join in. Can’t I join? Can’t I kick back, relax, and have a grand old time with everyone? Can’t I?

How could I? I don’t have time to have a good time. What if this is the last time I’ll ever be in this room—the scene of the crime? What if this is my last chance to ever get the truth out? The truth needs to come out. Now. I pull out a huge black marker from my back pocket, then turn my back to the rest of the party.

I begin writing on the walls.

Rapidly. Voraciously. Chicken-scratch handwriting, all capital letters, covering every surface, as quickly as I can, with my life story. The whole story. Unfiltered. Projectile vomiting it onto the walls in permanent black ink. I’m writing out the truth—something I promised him I would never do. I feel terrified to be finally doing it, but emboldened by the crowd around me, acting as a buffer of sorts, a cushion to protect me for whenever he inevitably returns. As I lean into my rapid writing flow, I yell out to everyone in the room behind me, asking for help—“This is my father’s house! We need to cover all the walls before he comes back!”

“We were actually getting ready to leave,” a voice from the crowd responds to me.

One by one, I watch the partygoers trickle out of the room.

I’m left alone in my father’s house.

Any person in their right mind would take this as a cue to follow the crowd, to run away, to find shelter—realizing the danger is too extreme, realizing it’s not worth the risk, realizing it’s not something one can face alone. I’m all alone. I know I’m in danger. The thought of leaving crosses my mind, but I can’t. I can’t run away. I can’t run because my hand is still rapidly darting across the walls with a life of its own, chained to the room. Heartbeat racing, sweat dripping, panic flooding my veins—I realize he's going to walk through the door any minute now. But I can’t stop. My body overrides the danger. My body tells me it’s worth it to get the truth out. My body tells me silence is more dangerous. My body tells me to keep writing on the walls.

I keep writing.

---

I wake up from the dream—Saturday, September 21st, 2024.

I log it on voice memo, first and foremost. I get dressed, walk downstairs, make breakfast, sip matcha. I begin digesting the dream.

After meeting Clementine just a few weeks prior, it made sense for her to appear in my dream. Connecting with her emboldened me to write more—to join the others at the festival—as if she gifted me an “all-access pass”, a personal invitation into the world of writing. I was excited about it. Yet my inner security guard rejected it. It wasn’t as simple as receiving a ticket—there were other forces at work.

You don’t belong in there, he warned me. Do you really want to be like your father? Do you want to force your way in? No. Not if the security guard doesn’t trust you. Not if he’s afraid of you. For security’s sake, tend to your own business first. Clean up your own mess. Take a left. Land right back in your father’s house. Write all over the walls. Don’t clean up your mess, actually. Make even more of a mess. That’s more like it.

Reflecting on the dream, that is more like it. I’m not a Real Writer™ yet. I’m writing all over the fucking walls to survive. I don’t have an all-access pass yet. I’m still in the fucking war zone. The dream told me the inconvenient truth I’d rather forget—exit the war before you enter the festival. Don’t delude yourself, the dream warned. Or rather, remember where you’re at. And where might that be?

“You are here”—an arrow reads on the crinkled map of my unconscious.

It points to a house my father will return to any minute. If I shared my location with you, you’d find me here—in active danger. Here—heart still racing, sweat still dripping, hand still darting across the walls. Here—still overriding the danger in my body. Here—inside a dangerous home, a dangerous body. Inside a body that is falling apart. That’s where you’d find me.

Later that evening, one of my housemates finds me in the shared kitchen of our communal home.

“How was your day?” he asks.

“Do you really want to know?” I warn him.

“Lay it on me.”

I tell him my day was rough. I tell him I’m worried about my body. I tell him my body is falling apart—that I live with a disabling connective tissue disorder, defective collagen, and joints that dislocate frequently. If I shared my location with you, you’d find me dislocated. Buffering. Inside a body that disconnects from itself with a single misstep. You’d find me watching every step I take, every move I make, treading carefully to hold together my moving parts. If I shared my location with you, you’d find me here—right back in my kitchen, explaining all of this to my housemate.

I tell him that I have a theory—“My connective tissue disorder feels related to the complete denial of boundaries in my developmental years. Connection was never safe. Not connection with others, and not connection with myself. My self-connection was entirely denied. I think the disconnect materialized in my connective tissues.”

I tell him that growing up in an incestuous home, my body was never mine to begin with. My body was never my home. My father could enter at any moment. He made it clear—“my” home was his home. And now, the stuff that holds “my” home together, the stuff that defines me as me, the stuff that connects the various parts of me—my collagen—is defective, so my joints are too loose. My boundaries of self are too loose. All thanks to him, or so I tell myself. I spell it out to my housemate—I don’t feel like my body is mine.

He takes a long pause, then asks me, “Do you dream?”

Ha! I can’t hold back my grin. He doesn’t know the half of it.

“I record my dreams every single night of my life,” I tell him.

“And what are they like?” he asks.

“I’m often panicking. I’m often in my father’s house.”

I recount the dream from the night before to him in detail—the excitement of receiving a ticket from Clementine, the dejection of not being welcomed into the festival, the inevitability of landing back in my father’s house instead. I paint the picture of me desperately writing all over the walls, trying to claim his house, the scene of the crime, as my own—by permanently marking it with the truth.

Taking another long pause, he looks at me pensively.

“Houses in dreams are often thought to represent your body,” he tells me softly.

I stare at him for a moment, speechless, until I begin to cry.

It’s a cry of relief—the kind of tears that flow automatically when an undeniable truth fits itself into your body like a missing puzzle piece. In an instant, the dream’s message is clear. Perhaps I was shielding myself from it. Perhaps I needed to hear it from someone else. Perhaps some insights can only be reached in communion. His words open a new universe in me. I let their implication sink in.

Could my body be my father’s house?

Could I be relating to my own body as if it is? As if I must find an escape route at all costs? Have I been living as if he still owns my home? As if he’s going to return at any moment? Living with frantic urgency, severed from the rest of the group, left all alone, trying to singlehandedly get the truth out before he returns? Have I been “desperately writing all over the walls, trying to claim his house my body, the scene of the crime, as my own—by permanently marking it with the truth”?

It’s precisely what I told my housemate as I described my connective tissue disorder, before he even asked about the dream. My body was not my home. Not only was it not my home, my body was his home. He was the homeowner. There was never a single moment my body belonged to me, because much like the dream, even if he wasn’t currently present, he would always be returning at any moment—so I lived in constant preparation. I was a squatter in my own body, ever-preparing for eviction from my own flesh, anticipating the house would burn down at any moment.

When your body is the crime scene, where can you hide? Where can you run?

Even in the dream, I couldn’t run—“The thought of leaving crosses my mind, but I can’t. I can’t run away. I can’t run because my hand is still rapidly darting across the walls with a life of its own, chained to the room. My body overrides the danger.”

When you’re living inside the crime scene, you have no choice but to override the danger. When there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, the only option left is to tell the truth, to write it on the walls, even if nobody is around to witness. In the dream, while everyone else enjoyed themselves, I was beholden to my task of permanently marking the house with the truth, trying to claim it as my own.

“Is that what I’m doing in my own body?” I ask myself.

The possibility isn’t far-fetched. I don’t want to blame myself, and I’m not—our bodies have intelligences of their own. Given that my body indeed doubled as my father’s house, and given my desire to escape my father’s house, perhaps the looseness of my joints was a means of trying to get free, a means of trying to squeeze out of the cage—my body’s language. A protest I had no control over.

But the writing? That was a language—and protest—I had perfect control over. Writing, in the dream, was positioned as the medicine, the solution, the antidote. Quick! If I can cover the walls with writing, I will finally be safe. Once the full truth gets spilled from within me, I will be safe at last—the truth is the cure. If I can turn myself inside out and mark every inch of the house, the curse will be lifted, and home ownership will be transferred back to its rightful owner.

A girl can dream.

Of course I’m not ready to enter the festival. The walls haven’t been covered yet. I’ve got unfinished business to attend to. I’m still inside a dangerous home, all alone, no witnesses to protect me. My words as sole witness. My safety dependent on my ability to write the truth. Urgently. No time to waste. He’ll be returning any minute.

“Why am I so afraid of him returning?” I ask aloud.

I didn’t realize I was afraid of that. I haven’t seen him in over a decade.

I write off my fear and my dream as residue of trauma, reflective of the terror still alive in my body, but not indicative of a present threat. Of course my body fears his return—because to survive him, my body learned to always fear his return.

That terror has been embedded in my core.

He’ll never actually return.

---

Three weeks later—Sunday, October 13th, 2024.

I wake up to a message from Clementine.

“Your writing has my full support. I feel very strongly it needs to be widely read. If you have any questions about getting your work out there or need me to signal boost anything, just let me know. You have my 100 perfect backing.”

It’s the first thing I read in the morning. It came out of nowhere, seemingly. I wasn’t sure what prompted the message. But immediately, I ask myself—is this the “all-access pass”? Clementine is handing me a ticket, inviting me to the festival. A deep, inner knowing conjured up the image in a dream just a few weeks prior. And here it is.

How do I receive it? It’s hard for me to receive good things. It’s hard for me to receive love, care, and support. Hard for me to accept that I can rely on others, that others truly have my best interests in mind. Hard for me to believe that anyone would want to give me a gift, let alone an “all-access pass”. I’m not sure what to reply, but I give myself a moment. I’m still waking up. I scroll through the rest of my messages.

One message from my mother—“If you get this text during the day on Sunday, could you please give me a call? [Redacted] called me and I need to talk to you about something she told me.” With dread in my gut, I call her.

Through a game of telephone, I am informed of the news:

My rapist has been reading my writing. Yes, this writing. He has been googling me, keeping tabs on me, and reading my writing about his incestuous violence. After over a decade of no contact, he has returned to the house. He walked through the door and found the writing I left all over the walls.

Waking life picked up right where my dream left off. As if I knew. As if I received a warning. As if I warned myself.

A deep, inner knowing conjured up the image in a dream just a few weeks prior. Here it is, again. All this time, I hoped that he had moved on with his life by now, that I would never have to hear a single thing about him for the rest of mine. In my conscious mind, he was as good as dead. In my unconscious mind, and in my body, however, a deeper knowing warned me that he would be returning to the house any minute.

Now, in real life, he is showing up to other family members’ houses—unexpected, uninvited, and unwelcome—to talk about the writing he found on the walls, to deny all of it, and to even try blaming my stepfather. He is on a PR tour trying to cover his tracks. He is engaging in psychological warfare, attempting to intimidate, attempting to break into the life I’ve built for myself. Though he would never dare to reach out directly, he managed to get his message delivered to me through a game of telephone—“I’m watching you.” And in the successful deliverance of this message, he invaded my home once again.

In absence of a home inside my own body, the home he stole, I’ve created another home for the truth to live, a home where it is welcome. An online space where I am free to write all over the walls—messily, ravenously—to expel the truth from my body and onto the page. An alchemical process of reclaiming ownership over my voice after a lifetime of secrets and silence, transmuting my bondage through the spells we call words. And in his obsession with following my every move, in his need to control and intimidate, he has invaded it—because in his sick mind, he still wants to own me. Because in his mind, as my creator, the rights to my body, soul, and voice forever belong to him. He returned to a house he still thinks he owns. He found the writing I left. As I try to claim the house as my own, he tries to scrub the writing off of the walls. He tries to erase the truth. Too bad I wrote it in permanent ink.

The dream clicks into place. The lines between conscious and unconscious blur. It was not simply a dream—it was a premonition. In the dream realm, Clementine gifts me a ticket, yet the security guard denies me entry. I am funnelled back into my father’s house, burdened with the life-threatening task of writing the truth all over the walls, anticipating his return. I wake up. I digest the dream. The message metabolizes in my body. Then, Clementine gifts me a “real” ticket, just moments before I am informed that my rapist has indeed returned and is indeed reading the writing on the walls. This unfolds on the same day, minutes apart. My nightmare comes true. He comes back. Only now, I have the real pass.

What does the real pass mean, exactly? What does the pass mean when juxtaposed to my inner security guard? Through what portal does the pass lead me into? I ask myself about the timing of it all, the cosmic intervention. I ask myself about the absolute necessity of receiving a message like Clementine’s just minutes before the news of my mother’s phone call left me crying, screaming, and terrified. I ask myself about the need for witnesses, about online community, functioning similarly to the crowd in my father’s house—the cushion I hoped would embolden me to keep writing despite his inevitable return looming over me. I ask myself if I prepared myself for this.

And as I reel in distress after receiving the news, cursing my mother for ever telling me this to begin with, wishing I could erase what I heard, and fearing that this knowledge of my rapist reading my writing will forever change the way I write, I remember that I still haven’t responded to Clementine. I remember that someone has my back.

I respond telling her about the situation. I don’t tell her that I dreamed about it all first, though—because how does one casually drop a psychic dream on someone they’ve never even met in person? Instead, I tell Clementine that I’m fucking terrified. I’m terrified to write now that I know my rapist is reading all of it. I’m terrified it’s going to change the way I write.

And it does. Instead of rapidly getting the truth out, instead of writing all over the walls, I stop in my tracks. I freeze. I’m left frozen for weeks as the reality sinks in that he is still watching me. I consider my next moves carefully. I consider making all of the writing on the walls private, but I realize that’s exactly what he would want—fewer people to read it. So, I wait. I deliberate. I wait even longer. Until weeks pass, and writing erupts out of me suddenly, ferociously, and uncontrollably, splattered all over the walls in a public letter. Like in the dream, I write

The whole story. Unfiltered. Projectile vomiting it onto the walls in permanent black ink. I’m writing out the truth—something I promised him I would never do. I feel terrified to be finally doing it, but emboldened by the crowd around me, acting as a buffer of sorts, a cushion to protect me for whenever he inevitably returns. As I lean into my rapid writing flow, I yell out to everyone in the room behind me, asking for help—“This is my father’s house! We need to cover all the walls before he comes back!”

Only now, instead of the party clearing out and leaving me all alone in my father’s house, the opposite happens. I hand over my all-access pass. My inner security guard finally trusts me enough to let me in. Clementine shares my public letter—the writing I left on the walls—and crowds of people swarm to embrace me. Some even heed my cry for help, joining in to cover the surfaces of the walls with me. My worst fear came true—he returned. But he can’t hurt me anymore, because I’m not alone. I’m protected by the crowd. I sigh in relief. And I ask myself again, “Is this what security feels like?”