The Night We Were Shot at

My dad told me the other day he was considering buying a gun. {This is not a pro-or anti-gun post. Promise. Stay with me.} The world feels unsafe was his gist. We haven’t seen eye to eye politically lately, so I steadied myself for a battle. He enjoys arguing. He should’ve been a lawyer. Instead it was me who went that route. The ability to argue all sides has come in handy with him. But as I sat and listened to him, I didn’t get my feathers fluffed. I found myself nodding. I found myself saying ok, I see your point. I found myself wondering, for a split second, if I should buy one too, even though I know that is likely to never ever happen because let’s be honest, that’s the last thing I need.

A few days later my mom and I were talking. She had listened to me and my dad, waiting with bated breathe for the eruption to begin. She was surprised when it didn’t. I quickly rationalized to her that daddy owning a gun didn’t bother me. He was a green beret in the army. Trained to handle it. Someone who knows his way around a gun. Plus I grew up with guns in the house. So the thought of more didn’t scare me. My dad getting closer to 80 was my one hesitation. And obviously I would want it locked up so the kids can’t get near it. Guns don’t bother me. People with guns bother me. And thus my trip down memory lane began.

I don’t remember if it was the gunshot or my mother’s screaming that woke me in the dead of the night. I’m pretty sure it was my mother. I had never heard a real gun shot before. I wouldn’t even know the sound. My mother’s voice I knew. This scream coming out of her I didn’t. Blood curdling. From across the house her voice cried out for us.

I don’t remember if she came into my bedroom. Maybe it was my brother whose room was across the hall. Or maybe I got out of the bed alone on my own at the sound of her scream. All I remember next is huddling in my bathroom crying. I was 10 years old. On that night in the middle of fifth grade, a man shot around 10 bullets at our house.

My brother and I found the bullet casings on our walk to the bus stop later that week. For many years I was shielded from the details, but at some point I learned more about those bullets. Some got stuck in the stucco. One went through. It stopped in the drywall leading into my bedroom. On the same wall where my headboard rested. Where I was sound asleep in bed.

That night my life changed. I was safe in the physical sense. Thankfully everyone in my family was, despite the shooter’s attempts to lure my dad outside. Dad had been watching TV and heard thuds against the house. He looked outside but saw nothing. Rocks in the stucco were later found in daylight. The guy was trying to get him outside. To shoot him. To kill the eye witness to the home invasion that he’d committed earlier that summer on our home. It was the night before the trial.

So maybe it was actually the summer when home was no longer a safe place for me. Regardless, the shooting cemented in my mind that home is not a refuge. For months I couldn’t sleep alone. I slept in the other twin bed in my big brother’s room. For years I hated being home alone. For years I was sure something bad would happen at night. While I was sleeping.

The fear extended beyond the walls of that beautiful home that my mother designed and built. We moved away a year later. All of us glad to leave it behind. But the fear of home stayed with me to three houses in Massachusetts, my high school home in Georgia, my dorm room, sorority room and house in Athens (although alcohol helped lull those fearful thoughts out enough for me to sleep), it continued in my apartment in Buckhead, to my teeny tiny law school apartment, to the first two apartments my now-husband and I first shared and the first home we bought together.

I was obsessed with locking doors and setting alarms. I would double and triple check that we were locked inside. That I was as safe as could be. But many nights I still didn’t sleep well. Perhaps that’s why I drank so much in my 20s. I never felt safe. Like ever. It has been this bubbling sense of fear underlying me for years. If my husband would go on business trips or away for the weekend, I Would. Not. Sleep. Not a wink. I relied on him to make and keep me safe. It was awful feeling like such a confident woman in the rest of my life, yet darkness would make me retreat into the little girl who feared the boogie man. Because I knew he was real.

My boogie man came in the form of a white construction worker building the house next to ours who learned our schedule and then plotted to steal everything while he knew we would be away. We were at a swim meet the night of the burglary. My swim meet. I don’t know if my 10 year old self has harbored some sense of guilt for the fact that we were at something for me. Probably. But the bad guy didn’t anticipate daddy coming home to change out of his work clothes between my events. He certainly wouldn’t have expected dad’s quick mind to jot down the license plate of the car sitting at the top of our very long driveway. Oh, and dad had a broken foot at the time. That first night really could have gone so much worse. Three guys in the house robbing it. One dad hobbling about catching them in the act.

It wasn’t until six years ago that we moved into our current house when the fear subsided. But that’s also the exact same time my panic attacks began. Holy shit I’ve literally never made that connection. My first big big panic attack was the night we closed on our house here. I wasn’t in this house at the time. We didn’t move into this house for another six weeks. But this house has always felt safe. I sleep here. I don’t hear house noises. I don’t stay up in the middle of the night if Todd is away. This house feels like home. I don’t make sure doors are locked at night. We have no alarm system. And yet I feel safe here. I’ve always wondered why that is. There’s nothing spectacular about this house. It’s an average middle-class Tudor-style home. I mean I love it, but it doesn’t have any magic sauce that all my other homes lacked. But as I sit here and type this I wonder if perhaps my fears of home somehow transformed to now simply manifest as anxiety.

I really should talk to a therapist about all this. That’s the kicker. I never have. I’ve seen no less than 4 different therapists over the years and never once has this experience come up. No one ever asked about my childhood. So I never brought it up. There were always more pressing issues. That sounds insane to type out. But I went to talk about depression, anxiety, how hard it is to be a mom, how much I was failing as a working mom, how sad I was all the time, how much I hated my job, how much I wanted to change something but was scared, panic, fear, anxiety and on and on. But never have I brought this up.

I once had a therapist jot down on her note pad as we were talking, then stop, look at me quizzically and in a very judgy voice say “hmmmm, well that is VERY interesting.” In my words to my husband: “she made me feel like a fucking headcase.” In her defense, I probably was/am. But I also don’t think you should leave therapy feeling worse than you went in with zero skills to deal with your growing anxiety attack problem. But, I suppose she is the reason I have not wanted to drudge up this shooting stuff with a new therapist. I know I should but I think I’ll attempt to write my way around it for a bit and see what comes up.

Could it be that as a child I experienced a massive loss of safety and was never able to grieve that loss? I’ve never thought that you could experience grief for anything other than a person or other living thing, but I read the words of another writer this morning and can’t stop thinking about this possibility. Up until I was 10, home was a loving and SAFE place. Then one night it suddenly wasn’t. Not because of anything my parents or other family members did. No. We all went through a shared trauma. But maybe because no one was physically hurt, we never addressed the emotional wounds that opened that night. Is it possible I’ve never fully addressed them. Shit. Fuck fully. Maybe I’ve never addressed them at all.

Time. That’s what’s changed. 29 years have passed since that night. Time heals all, right? That’s what we’re told. That’s what we are taught. But what if that is complete and utter bullshit. What if time simply serves to squash emotions down so deep into our body that we *think* we have healed, when in reality our insides are ready to explode. And then they do explode. At least for me they did.

I don’t know where this leaves me with this story. If I feel safe in this home, as in the four walls of physical space I currently live in, then maybe that’s enough. But the real thing I want to get at is feeling safe in my home. My body. Because that’s where the transfer of fear went. From the physical home to my physical body.

Maybe now was when I was finally ready to see it. Because as I write this, I feel more at home in my mental body than I have in 5 years. Which is ironic since we’re in the middle of a global fucking pandemic. Yet I’ve had more peace this last 6 weeks than I have in long time. I’ve done a few things different that I believe are helping move the emotions that have been stuck in my body and finally allowing them out. Not therapy in the traditional sense. And to most people it probably would sound like hocus pocus. But it’s working. And that should be what matters. Doing whatever you need to do to feel at home with yourself. A safe home. A loving home. A home you are comfortable living in. Even when boogie men are real. Even when so many things are out of your control.

You can always come back home. Keep fighting until you believe it. Keep searching. Keep connecting the dots. I sure as hell am going to keep writing this out and finding the missing pieces. In hopes that one day, my body and mind will be whole.