I don’t know if anyone else got pulled out of class to talk about their essays. It was the beginning of the term, ninth grade. Our history teacher gave us a warm-up free write–what were we afraid of?
I should have said sharks.
But I had written about the end of the world.
HBO’s 1981 documentary/movie, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, about Nostradamous, is partially to blame. The image of the man who will bring about WWIII, turbaned and entering a room through a Star-Trek door, is imprinted deeply in my mind.
I’d also been reading the Bible. I was trying to understand the religion I was being raised in.
My essay included a detail from the Bible–about how God would not spare anyone, not even women heavy with child. I’m not sure why I picture her running away from earthquake fissures, but I do. My small Conservative town had many people in it who thought abortion was the worst thing you could do (our town had one of the first abortion doctor murders). God, though, was willing to take the life of that unborn child.
We were all fucked.
My history teacher told me I didn’t have to worry about fleeing God’s wrath while pregnant.
My apocalypse fears didn’t go away, of course. I just talked about them less. My long-term boyfriends knew about them; my long-term therapist did too. Mostly because of the nightmares.
One of my boyfriends, when I was ending our relationship, tried to use this fear to persuade me to stay. “You’ll need me if there’s an apocalypse. And I would protect you. I would kill you before I let someone rape you.”
Note: People can survive rape; it’s not the worst thing I can imagine. It’s up there, but not the worst thing. Something happening to my child is the worst thing.
Also: The smart thing to do would be to use their distraction to figure out how to get us out of there.
Of all of my nightmares, one is the most vivid. Something had happened. I needed to pack a backpack and go, never to return. “How many underwear?” I remember thinking. I started to pack my pills, all the drugs that keep my alive. In my dream, I stopped packing and sat down beside the backpack on my bed. It was useless to flee; I was going to be dead in a month.
I woke up.
Therapy did help. The nightmares lessened.
Not surprisingly, I’m being triggered right now. In between the panic of having to get Winter quarter graded and keep my semester classes going, now online, and rearrange the whole way I teach for Spring quarter, and fears about the economy tanking so badly that I lose my job, I’m having lots of intrusive thoughts.
“What if this is the last time I have ice cream?”
These thoughts do not lead to a mindful enjoyment of any given experience.
I don’t know how to end this post.
I don’t know how things like this end.
