3 ms·
My earliest memory involves a near-death experience. We were visiting my grandparents at their old farmhouse in the country in SC. I was 18 months and managed
by thrill 6y ago
My earliest memory involves a near-death experience. We were visiting my grandparents at their old farmhouse in the country in SC. I was 18 months and managed to disappear from everyone, wandering outside and falling into an old washtub half full of water and leaves. No one ever mentioned to me that this had happened, but when I was a teenager I began having vivid dreams about drowning, talking about the bright colors I could see floating above me and how hard I was trying to climb out of something. I told my Mom about these and the look on her face was remarkable, and she told me about the event, how the family had never talked about it because they were all ashamed at having lost sight of me, and how my lips had turned blue when they finally found me.
- tartoran 6y agoThat sounds like trauma. A lot of us carry trauma that we're not aware of or know about it but don't realize how badly it dawns upon us until it does. I don't think I had a near death experience but I was really afraid of water when I was a kid, only the smell of swimming pool or chlorine would send me into a panic mode. My father taught my sister to swim quite early and when he tried on me he inadvertently gave me the feeling of drowning when holding me on the water. The sensation of being with the head close to water is similar to waterboarding and this thing I only realized way late in my 30s why it was so. Other trauma I had was fear of hospitals and that was similar to the water one. Of course it eventually subsided but later on I found out that when I was very little an unexperienced nurse pinched me several times on each of my arms because she could not find the veins and the trauma stayed there. These are not huge traumas by any means but the mechanism manifests quite the same. When one reexperiences trauma it feels like an irrational fear without being able to pinpoint where it is coming from.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoI don't know if it was near death and I don't recall the incident directly, but at roughly the same age (~18 months) I was staying with my grandparents for a weekend and at some point managed to get out of the house without my grandfather noticing. After a while he noticed that I wasn't in the house and started frantically searching. He found me somewhere out in a nearby empty field holding onto a largish snake. It's weird, I don't have any memory of this incident, however I can swear I've seen a black & white photo of me holding said snake - no such photo exists. Not sure if it was venomous or not. I was apparently holding it in the right place, just below the head so as to avoid being bit (lucky). My grandfather actually told the story often with a sort of pride. At the time he was a Pentecostal Church of God pastor and he kind of liked idea of snake handling, I guess.
- bitexploder 6y agoSometimes we make memories up. We hear stories about an event enough and our brain just fills in the blanks until it becomes solid seeming.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]