Faith Allen’s Story – Buried Alive

*******trigger warning – confinement and emotional abuses*******

My abusers would sometimes bury me alive. I don’t know why other than to freak me out. I cannot fathom what purpose burying someone alive has other than to be cruel. Those memories are more flashes than anything else.

I did recover one “after” memory of digging myself out and then finding my mother talking to S & L (my most sadistic abusers). I remember her making a crack about how dirty I was. I was a little girl who just wanted to watch TV or read a book. It was very unusual for me to get dirty at all, so my mother’s flip comment about being “dirty” was very upsetting to me.

They would put some sort of tube in my mouth so I could breathe, and then they would heap dirt on me. I feared what would happen if they put something in the tube because then I would not be able to breathe.

To this day, I hate to get my hands dirty. I hate gardening, and I let people think it is because I am too much of a “princess” to get dirt in my fingernails. The truth is that any type of dirt in my fingernails really wigs me out. What’s even worse is dirt inside of my nails, such as when your nail separates, and then dirt gets stuck between the two parts. Seeing any split in my nails sends me over the edge. I have to cut my nails off before I let my nails split like that.

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Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt