Dr. John A. King describes seeing daffodils in 2008 and suddenly remembering twelve years of childhood abuse. The flood of memories shattered his identity, cost him his family, business, and church. He notes men often experience this kind of sudden recall between 35 and 45.
Man, that's one— that's a really nice way of putting it, man. Like the poo just hit the fan, brother. Like one day I had total recall of what happened to me. I call it Johnageddon. Actually, my internal marketing department calls it Johnageddon. I went from John 1.0, very logical, left-brain-driven, goal-orientated John 2.0, who wanted to smoke cigars and write poetry and try and reclaim his life. And that was literally a swap in the brain that happened when I had recall of what happened to the kid and it all came flooding back and I ended up developing a chronic stutter, losing my family, my business, my church at the time, and I had to rebuild everything back. Was there an event that caused it or? Yeah. Daffodils. See, when I was— yeah, daffodils. When I was a kid, Mrs. McGregor had a house a block and a half down and she had these beautiful plum trees and under the plum trees she planted daffodils. And every day when the, when the nights were too long or too violent, I'd walk to school in the morning and it was about a 20-minute walk, 25-minute walk. And every spring the daffodils would come up. And the daffodils spoke to me of hope and possibility. And one morning at about 10 in the morning on a Thursday in 2008, I think it was October or November, daffodils came up. And I looked down and I thought to myself, it was beautiful, man, blue sky, like The Simpsons opening. And I looked down at these daffodils and I thought, man, they're beautiful daffodils. And my mind at that point decided to vomit my memories all over a very pristine, orderly life. And everything came out and I had instant recall. Of 12 years of abuse. And for men, it happens often like that, particularly somewhere between 35 and 45. They get recall, or they start to understand what they experienced as a child was adverse.
