Today ends my tour of duty as a single parent. IZ is making his way back home from a 12 day stint of painting. I can honestly say, I can’t remember being so tired. Stress and exhaustion (and
Heaven forbid a combination!) seep out in strange ways. I’m a “bottler”, a “stuffer”. So I carry around all my grief or frustration or anxiety on the inside. Occasionally I have a minor meltdown. Tears, snot, puffy red eyes, and hiccuping ensue. But that’s a rarity which takes a lot more than you would imagine to actually happen. Despite my reputation for being overly emotional, I rarely have a full-out atomic event. Instead, things “eek” out, typically in my sleep.
I’ve suffered from night terrors most of my life. They usually take the form of spiders falling from the ceiling and me bolting upright. Sometimes I make a mad dash out of the room. Sometimes I scream with such terror that I am hoarse in the morning. Most of the time they are minor events, hardly worth noting. But the intensity and frequency has became much more
noticeable since I started Seminary. Correlation does not equate cause and effect. But I’d bet money there’s a connection.
Last Thanksgiving when my parents were in town, I screamed so loud and so long one night that my father sleeping down stairs threw on his jeans and sprinted out of the house barefooted brandishing his knife.
He ran three blocks looking for me before he realized I might still be in the house. It was just after midnight. He’s fortunate that no one in this sleepy little borough called the cops. He would have had a hard time explaining why he was running down the streets of San Anselmo half dressed carrying a weapon. I’m fortunate it was only a knife and not his police issued firearm.
He has his own traumas.
Three years ago, this month, IZ came into the bookstore where I was working and told me to sit down. His hands were trembling as he related the phone call he had just received. My father had called from Venezuela to let me know that he and my mother had been kidnapped and held at gun point for the length of a day before being inexplicably released. Their captors had blindfolded them, bound their hands, and forced them into the backseat of their Ford Explorer. For hours the kidnappers insisted that my parents were rich Americans–for hours my parents insisted they were only poor missionaries. Despite being bound, my father managed to reach into his pocket and find his knife. He opened it and waited. He was determined that when the end came, as they expected it would, he would not go down without a fight. My mother quietly prayed and reminded my father to remain calm.
One of the kidnappers began to climb into the backseat but instead of shooting, he tossed the car keys in their direction and patted my dad’s hand. He mumbled an “I’m sorry” and then they were gone.
A month later, they left Venezuela for good. I had wanted them to come home early–but they were already scheduled to leave in July before the kidnapping happened. They felt it important
to stay and make their goodbyes. So, they summoned up their courage, told very few people, and sojourned on. Keeping it all in is a family trait. I can’t help but wonder why my parents aren’t
screaming in their sleep. They came home to help me move into the apartment I am moving out of now.
I don’t know if the terrors will stop when I move. I doubt it. Life will still be stressed–still full of frustrations. I will still battle with anxiety and depressions. I’m not likely to stop bottling it all up or
carrying everyone’s grief anytime soon.
Yet, I can’t help but think that somehow this space has held the grief and fear and sadness of what happened just as I have. It has carried my panic and anger at being so powerless. I have no say in where my parents live–although they know my preferences. I support them not because I agree but because I love them. They live a different sort of life and my life makes about as much sense to them as theirs does to me. They tell me about the ugliness and the hardship because they have so few people to tell, so few people who can understand. I carry it all because I can. And when I can
carry it no longer, the walls around me absorb all my grief and fear, all my anxiety and anger. All my screaming in the night.
