I went to the grocery store today. As I was driving to the store, I remembered the very first time I drove solo. My mom let me drive to an ATM machine to get some cash. It didn’t take very long less than ten minutes, but the entire time I was gone, I felt myself in a state of high alert. I had all these scenarios running through my mind about all the things that could go wrong. I literally felt a sense of relief when I got back home.
When I found myself driving to the store today, I realized that although the feeling isn’t as strong, every time I leave the house, especially when I am by myself, I have that same sense of being on high alert. I tried to figure out where it comes from.
Then another memory came to me. I was seventeen years old, and I was taking driver’s education. The school was within walking distance, so I just walked there and back. One day as I was walking home. I saw a man approaching me. I got out my keys and tried to get into the house before he could get to me, but I wasn’t fast enough. I thought he was going to hurt me. It turns out he just wanted to ask about our neighbor, and he had perfectly benign intentions. For me, I had been taught that anyone that I met on the street wanted to hurt me. I shouldn’t trust anyone about anything ever.
When I leave my house, I feel like I am leaving safety. I am surrounded by all these people and things that I was taught want to hurt me and I need to be on high alert to protect myself. Even now, when I haven’t lived at home for twenty-three years, I’m still finding myself dealing with the repercussions of those lessons that are so ingrained in my psyche.
The best way I can describe it is swimming in a pool. If you hold on to the side, you know you are safe because you have the side to hold on to, but as soon as you let go of that side, you are in open water. Anything can happen, you could even drown. For me, my home is like the side of the pool, as long as I am there, I have something to make me feel relatively safe, but as soon as I leave, I feel exposed, like I am in open water, and anything can happen.
The lesson I need to learn or unlearn is that the open space of life is filled with beautiful, wonderful things. Sure, there are bad things that could happen, but I can’t live thinking everything and everyone is going to be bad. There is no way to prove to myself that everyone and everything isn’t going to be a bad experience, especially because sometimes they will be. The only way to fix the problem is to have faith in God and His plan. I need to just take baby steps and venture out into the world believing that even though everything in my body says I should be afraid, it’s because of trauma that isn’t based in reality. If everything is bad, then there’s no point to life. It can’t be all bad.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
