We are born into innocence; corruption comes later.
- Laura Hobson
I had my first flashback at 22, though I had no idea at the time that it was anything more than a bad dream. It would be years later before the images became clearer and the reality more obvious. Some people don’t believe flashbacks of trauma reflect any actual happening. I challenge them to live through one and not believe in its truth. The first was shortly after college. I was living in a rented house nestled deep in the woods of Central Florida with two roommates, my best friends at the small paper where I had my first job as a reporter. I was excited by the “real” life I was creating for myself. That is probably why the night terrors were so startling and unexpected.
First, they arrived as shadowy figures that appeared in my room late at night, so clearly and vividly that I was convinced an attacker had somehow broken into the house. He was at the foot of the bed, his face concealed in darkness. In a second, I was fully awake and on my feet. I screamed from a place deep inside, guttural and full of the blood curdling terror of horror movies, my roommates later told me. I rarely remembered the episode the following morning.
The two of them, one a movie critic and columnist, the other a young and fearless photographer, rushed to my bedroom at the end of the hall, convinced I was being brutally attacked by someone, probably a man, possibly a rapist. I remain amazed today at their complete lack of hesitation in rushing to my rescue, not knowing what or who they would find. Jim, the photographer, was the first to arrive, a long brass lamp wielded above his head, ready to strike, his long hair as wild as his eyes. Sam was right on his heels. They later told me they found me standing on the bed, eyes wide with fear, pointing to the figure only I could see. “No, no, no, get ouwwwwwwwwwwt,’’ I screamed. “Get ouwwwwwt. Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.’’
I was completely alone, staring at nothing anyone else could see. Later, over cereal and coffee, we chalked it up to something I’d eaten, a bad dream and nothing more. Until it started happening with startling regularity. Eventually, Mike and Pete stopped rushing to my aid. They knew what it was. They knew it would pass and I would collapse to the bed in exhaustion and usually remember none of it in the morning. They covered their ears and tried to go back to sleep.
In the early 90s, I was young and full of the confidence and bravado of a woman in her 20s with nothing but a bright future ahead. Top of my class in college, editor of the college paper, I had dragged a trunk cross country on a Greyhound bus to work as a park ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park. My parents thought I was crazy. I simply wanted to live and experience anything and everything. From the Rocky Mountains, I traveled through Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, Idaho – anywhere the mood struck me - usually camping with friends but once or twice renting a car and striking out on my own if no one else was up for the adventure. I slept in my car and once drove eight hours by myself with a fractured pelvis because I had been thrown from a horse and couldn’t afford a trip to the emergency room. The fracture never healed properly and still bothers me to this day. I was reckless, fearless - and foolish. I now believe I was running from fears buried so de!
ep I never imagined they existed - until the flashbacks became horribly more frequent and vivid.
At 23, I had moved on to a bigger paper and more responsibility. I had a steady boyfriend and a cute but small apartment in Fort Lauderdale. Once again, I thought I feared nothing but shortly after arriving, the anxiety, depression and heavy drinking began. No one knew how much I struggled every morning. I became good at the happy face, the cheerful demeanor, the confident veneer. Inside, I was lost, frightened and wondering whether I was fit to survive the world. Alcohol became my constant companion.
Once again, night terrors plagued me, again with alarming frequency. This time, a fellow reporter I’d been dating almost since I arrived at the paper endured the confusing and often frightening episodes. He hated that he could do nothing to calm them. I’m convinced now that it is as hard, if not harder, to witness these episodes as it is to experience them.
Sometimes, I saw the shadowy figure at the bed. Sometimes, I heard a child crying desperately and was convinced that somewhere nearby a toddler was in terrible danger. I cried feverishly for the baby I couldn’t find and insisted that my boyfriend had to hear the cries as well. Of course, he never did. Once again, I would collapse into a deep sleep. He would tell me in the morning and I would cry again, not remembering a single moment of the episode but horrified by their return. Other than my boyfriend, no one knew. Who could I tell? Seeking outside help was simply not something I knew anything about. In my family, problems were pushed aside, denied, never discussed. My terrors were mine and mine alone. Four years later, when they began again, I did not even remember that they had ever happened previously. That is what the mind does with images and memories it simply cannot handle.
The secret of my night torments was only revealed when the alcohol abuse got so bad that my job was seriously in jeopardy. I’d been drinking daily for months, eventually in the morning and at lunch. I carried a bottle of rum or vodka in my backpack and spiked my Big Gulps at the 7-11 on the beach, returning with a buzz sufficient to make it through the day. Sometimes, I would begin the day with several Budweisers instead of my usual black coffee. I did my job, sometimes winning awards, more often barely making it through the simplest of stories. Driving drunk, as horrible as I feel about it now, was a regular occurrence. I would pull over to nap. Cops would stop to make sure I was okay. Never did they suspect I was drunk. I lied that I was just too sleepy and had to pull over. That they bought it and did not take me to jail still amazes me. I was lucky or so I thought. Perhaps getting caught would have hastened my recovery. Perhaps not.
It all seemed, if not normal, then simply the reality that life had dealt me. This was who I was and there was simply no way of changing it. Drinking was my medicine, the only way to cope with the terrifying feelings that plagued me daily. I had to survive and alcohol was the only way I believed I would. I was an alcoholic who didn’t even know what the word meant. Only later would I realize it was a disease with a long history in my family, one that had taken many lives in one way or another, whether through accidents, disease or violence.
I was headed down the same path until a kind editor intervened and told me I needed help. He had been informed by one of my co-workers that I had alcohol on my breath while on the job. I never did find out who told but I am so grateful that he did. Though real sobriety would not arrive for nearly a decade, the seed had been planted. As many alcoholics experience upon being “found out,” I felt immense release and relief at being caught. I knew I needed help but had no knowledge of how to get it.
The editor said I would not be fired – which would have been a devastating blow to me, who had always found success with little effort. But to keep my job, I had to do something just as unacceptable to my mind. I was ordered to attend a 28-day outpatient treatment program and an AA meeting once a week. I was mortified. I did not want to be there and figured it was just a sentence I had to pay for my bad behavior. As they say in recovery, I simply was not ready. I was too young, had too much life to live and too much partying to do. All my friends drank, though most not as heavily or rapidly as I did. I couldn’t get the stuff down fast enough. Sobriety, despite my rapid descent into serious alcohol addiction, was simply not an option.
I completed the treatment program, got my papers signed to verify my attendance at AA and, after a year and a half of staying “clean,” figured I was okay to drink again. I know now that this is the “great obsession of every abnormal drinker,’’ as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes it. “The idea that somehow, someday he will be able to control and enjoy his drinking,” is an illusion, the early members of AA wrote, that “many pursue… into the gates of insanity or death.’’ How close I was to one or both is astonishing to me now.
The only indication I had that I might suffer from something beyond a little heavy drinking came during one of the group sessions at the treatment I dreaded every Tuesday night. I described, for the first time to anyone on the “outside,’’ some of the visions I’d had at night. The counselor introduced the possibility that something had happened to me as a child. I refused to consider it. I literally put the notion into a mental box on a shelf never to be opened again, or so I thought. It would be several years before the box opened of its own accord and forced me to review its contents more thoroughly.