The ramblings of an abused kid (trigger warnings galore)

[GoSlash27]

The frustration of amnesia:
 An individual identifies "self" by the collection of his or her experiences and experiences are recorded as memories. It's the Star Trek transporter paradox; if I step into the transporter and another identical copy of me is generated with my memory, is that person still me? Or did I die and now some clone is wandering around?
 My memories are jumbled, chaotic, and at least some are absent. That means I am not fully defined. Who am "I"? Am I even myself? 
 
 This started with my recounting of a severe weather event I had personally lived through: The "Cleveland Superbomb" blizzard of 1978. I then looked up other extreme weather events I had personally experienced. "The Storm of the Century", 1993. "Iowa's Katrina" flood, 2008. "Midwest Derecho", 2020. These served as useful timestamps for me, so I googled more severe weather events I experienced.

 I found the May 31, 1985 Pennsylvania tornado outbreak. One of the deadliest in US history. 
  It occurred where I lived and I have absolutely no recollection of it ever having happened.
 I dug deeper and discovered that I have no recollection of ANY major news events whatsoever roughly April through September 1985. And they were big events.
 I sat there like a coma patient, reading news stories that happened but I was totally unaware of.
 I remember most stuff prior and post, but that stretch is an inky void where I seemingly wasn't even on the planet or not conscious.
 Is this proximal to a traumatic event? What happened to me in summer 1985? Now that I've seen the discrepancy, I cannot unsee it.
 
 
 

[GoSlash27]

McEntyre Childrens' Shelter. Pittsburgh, 1974.

 My sister and I simultaneously requested our records from our time in the foster care system. She asked me about my memories from that period and urged me to write it all down. Like me, she's trying to rebuild a coherent timeline.
 I won't attempt all that in one sitting, but I'm just going to put everything I can recall here.

[NarcKiddo]

She asked me about my memories from that period and urged me to write it all down.

Be gentle with yourself as you do so, Slashy. What gentle looks like may depend on whether you unearth a load of challenging memories, or whether you have trouble unearthing any at all. I've tried to unearth memories from a time in my childhood when I feel I should remember more than I do. I have some weirdly accurate pointers. I remembered the name of a hotel where my parents liked to socialise when I was under 5. This meant I was able to Google it and I hoped pictures might jog some memories. There are some online photos from the 1970s but they didn't yield anything. I remember the name of a medical professor my sister was taken to in connection with walking problems. I never even met the man! Anyway, I research any clues that pop up in my brain whenever they do but so far have not made any headway.

I hope you can achieve what you hope to, but memory is a slippery fish. Especially if our brain is trying to keep it from us for some reason.

[GoSlash27]

The dormitory bays at McEntyre Shelter ca. 1974:
 Narrow rooms containing 8 cribs each. Cribs abutted the walls. Stainless steel crib bars and sky- blue walls. Nylon waterproof mattresses. Reinforced window with bars at one end of the room, steel door with small reinforced glass window at the other.
 I did not know how to unlock the bars when I arrived, but another toddler showed me how. A small rotating lever at the bottom near my feet. I could just barely reach it and lower the bars without making noise.
 The door opened into a dorm "common area".
 After bedtime, we would hide behind the door and observe the adults in the common area. The motif was very 1960s. Faux cut stone hallway, shag carpet, sixties style couches and TV.
 The hallway ran left and right by our door. To the left were more bays on the left hand side and the bathroom on the right. To the right was at least one more bay on the right and a security station on the left.
 The security station was sort of an alcove. Brightly lit with a counter that faced the common area.

 The grownups knew we weren't in our cribs and watching them, but they'd mostly let us do that so long as we didn't annoy them. But occasionally we *did* annoy them and that's when they shut the doors.
 I didn't mind the crib because I knew how to get out of it. I very much *did* mind the closed door because I couldn't open it.
 It was very dark in the bays with the door closed. Lonely, isolated, trapped. There were other toddlers there, but none of them were my family and my parents were gone.
 Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep or hear another little boy doing that and I could hear the toot of a switching locomotive in the nearby railyard in the night. It was such an incredibly lonely feeling!

 I've only recently pieced together the memories of the dorm area/ experiences. I've realized that the "toot" in the middle of the night is a trigger for me. I instantly bolt awake, flooded with adrenaline.
 I remember that there was a bathroom and its location, but no memory of the interior. I don't remember how we bathed, dressed, or did any of that stuff. I don't remember what clothes we wore.
 
   

[GoSlash27]

McEntyre Shelter main building, ca 1974.
 I don't know what word to use to describe this facility. It was like a gymnasium, but much larger. The shelter was functionally a "kid prison", so the best word to describe it would be "yard". Except it was indoors. We were never allowed to be outdoors.
 We spent most of our time in this area. It was subdivided by tan tweed accordion fold dividers. Large institutional "prison" space. laquered salmon colored cinderblock walls, large inset windows reinforced and barred, too high to see out of.
 Each sub- room held kids of the same age, carefully segregated from siblings. They served as nurseries/ preschools/ schools appropriate to age.

 The rooms contained long white tables. Almost like party tables but bigger. And instead of typical school benches, they had separate pastel fiberglass chairs.
 Everything was done at those tables, including meals.
 There were toys, coloring books, a mobile blackboard, Little Golden Books, etc.

 Contact between siblings was strictly forbidden, but just as I could defeat the latch on my crib, my brother found a way to work around the restriction. He checked on me and showed me where my sister was kept. Sometimes when the partitions were half open I could spot her.
 Eventually both were gone and it was just me.

 

[GoSlash27]

 There were only two other scenes I can recount from my time there. They may have been separate buildings or subdivisions of the others.

 The "induction area". I think I've already recounted this area. I'll check and come back.

 *Oops*, I guess not.

 My baby sister (age 2) went first in the back of a white sedan driven by some lady in a black dress with a briefcase. I assume she was a caseworker. My brother (age 4) instructed me to do as the adults said and everything would be okay. I (age almost exactly 3) went next in the back of a police paddywagon , screaming and crying all the way.
 When I arrived, they put me in a bassinet in a large dark room full of bassinets, but I was the only kid there. Same layout as the "yard", but with the same security area I described with the dorms. The bassinet was too small for me and I was in full freakout mode. The only light was from the security area and the security lady cocked back her fist and threatened to punch me in the face if I didn't shut up.
 I think this event is linked to the song "Jet".
 

[GoSlash27]

Last area is the "interview room". That's where they brought me to meet my new foster parents. It was like the yard, but darker and tiny. Same chairs, different table.
 They pulled me out of the yard and changed my clothes, brought me to this room.
 The interaction itself is a whole story, but the upshot is when you go to a shelter and visit the dogs, I know exactly how the dogs feel.

 I think that's it. I'll recount more details if I remember any.