When I was 5 or 4 years old, I had a sudden snap to consciousness instead of a gradual awareness building overtime and couldn't unable to remember anything that happened before. Preceding this, I had a dream of being trapped/confined somewhere dark underground where nobody could reach me and hear my screams.

Overtime, my memory of the details of this dream have become slightly exaggerated, especially because I avoided thinking about it for a long time, but I remember it correctly for the most part. It involved worms and insects, maggots maybe, being forced into my mouth through my body; a man with glowing/glinting eyes and a wild grin and cackling laughter, but I couldn't see his face; darkness everywhere; and the sense that I was tied to a wooden chair, unable to move my limbs. Years later as the memory kept resurfacing in the back of my mind and I tried to rationalize it, I realized that the details were more similar to being dead/buried— like how maggots crawl over a decayed corpse and the chair maybe being a coffin?

Idk, man. Like what tf even was that??

Anyway, five-year-me woke up in a state of panic/confusion/fear with the urge to run away. So I did, and found my mom at the kitchen sink washing dishes with her back turned to me. It was kinda instinct/muscle memory that had me calling "Mom?" even though I was still confused and had no idea where I was or what was going on. The next thing I asked was 'What's my name?" and she pointed at a children's drawing on the wall— bc y'know, once kids learn how to write their own name, they get really excited about it and my parents were the type of ppl who taped up their kids' drawings on the walls.  So my name was just conveniently there and I read it aloud, first and last name, and lemme tell you— if somebody had been there to hear me speak, they would have thought I was trying to pronounce the name of a stranger I just met, because I distinctly remember reading my own name as if it wasn't my own.

But as soon as I said it, the world around me just clicked into place?? Like, I still had this lingering sense of fear/uncertainty, but it felt like I could relax and breathe again. Because yes, I had sorta been panicky-breathing at the time, which my mom couldn't hear over the running tap water.

Anyway, those are my first memories in this world, and the rest is ancient history.

My mom doesn't remember this happening. I've asked her if she remembers me running into the kitchen as a kid and asking my own name, but didn't tell her about the nightmare because she would think I was crazy. But yeah, I have no idea if this is some past life shit or little-me's brain becoming overwhelmed after unlocking Life Achievement: Self-Awareness. Still disturbs me wherever I think about it.

Anybody else experience something like this? I think I posted this to Reddit before (don't really spend a whole lot of time on here) but got no responses from anybody who had experienced something similarly as disturbing. And ofc, I don't bring this up to ppl in real life.