You


There have been too many years. Too many decades of trying to guess who you might be. Better that you forget, and move on to who you are now.

You still have the nightmares. I know that you still wake some nights, cold and shivering: rank,  with the fear sweat soaking into the bedding. I hear the gasping, panting breath forced from you as you run, endlessly, from the things in your dreams that seek you out and hunt you down. And I know that some of those dreams have haunted you since you were small... so small that you should not remember. So small that you should not have been able to form or comprehend the images, let alone remember them. And now, when they come to you in the darkness, in the distant recesses of your unconscious, you know them. You are so distressingly familiar with them that you whine in your sleep because you know what is coming, just as surely as you know that you can't escape it.

Some say that dreams are simply a way for your mind, your subconscious, to work through and make sense of things that have happened to you. Making sense of your day; your world.  Others say they are simply unfettered imagination - your mind, released by sleep, running free.

But a few, like your grandmother, knew that sometimes, dreams are warnings. Portents of things to come - changes. Events.Experiences.. things that you need to be aware of, in order to avoid them.. or to survive, whichever their circumstances dictate.  You...

You


Survivor. Escapee? Not you. You never avoided: there was no opportunity for that. You were dragged in, and through, and out the other side of a hell not of your making.  You survived: but not unscathed.

Some say you are broken. Some say that you are a victim, destroyed by the acts of others..  We know how wrong they are. We know YOU. damaged, yes: but not broken. Not entirely. Victimised, perhaps: but no longer a victim. You came through, scarred and different, but you came through nonetheless. You... no longer who you once were. Not now who you were originally destined to be... but always, ever, and completely You.

I know you. I know you well... and yet there is so much more to know.

You.  Remember?  Always You.

I know you. Because, despite every shattering event that tried to make it otherwise.. I AM You.