I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This: A Memoir

by Nadja Spiegelman

It would take me years to realize that not everyone had nightmares about bombs and planes. In those nightmares, I was not afraid. I was in the cool lucid place beyond fear. In all of them, I had a small child with me. In one, I drove us through a road filled with land mines. In another, I hid us in a basement while men with guns shot anyone who moved. When the shooting stopped, I crept out and found us water. My dreams were not about death. They were about survival. They diminished in frequency, but they never stopped. One morning in my late twenties, I awoke with the realization that I was also the child. The building had fallen and split me in two. The world moved on too quickly for me, looking back before the moment had even passed. Part of me had stayed frozen, floating above the West Side Highway. The self that had kept walking, had found water, was a different me, profoundly altered.