As a kid, my greatest fear was that someone would break into our house and kill me while I was asleep. It kept me from falling asleep at night. I would either stay up late to prevent it from happening or distract myself by watching TV or reading until I fell asleep. It is a strange anxiety to have. I have no idea how it started or why I thought it would happen. It seems to have some underlying pathological paranoia or at least a grand sense of importance that someone would break in to kill only me.
One night, when I was seventeen, a neighbor knocked on our door at ten pm. This never happened. No one in our house was home enough to know any of the neighbors well. The neighbor warned us that he saw someone jump over our fence and into our backyard. This sent my anxiety into overdrive. I stayed up until 3 am watching Mean Girls on repeat because in 2008 I did not have Netflix and only had a handful of DVDs to choose from.
On the surface, this seems like a strange anxiety, but it is an extreme example of my fear of vulnerability. This fear appears in other areas of my life. I was afraid to fall asleep because I would be vulnerable. I am afraid to share my writing because it leaves me vulnerable. I am afraid to let people see the real me because it requires me to be vulnerable.
My anti-vulnerability crusade began when my parents separated. My mother, brother, and I moved from Massachusetts to California to be closer to her family. I was five, turning six at the time, and it was a traumatic disruption to my early childhood years. I left a family and an environment I knew well to live with a family that felt like strangers to me.
I was confused, hurt, and lost in my new environment. I acted out. I was aggressive with other kids. I didn’t speak much. I didn’t eat much. I withdrew. But the people around me did not know me well enough to recognize the was a dramatic shift in my behavior.
I did these things to protect the confused and traumatized version of myself. I wore my anger and my disinterest as an armor, barricading the real me inside to never be hurt again.
This may come as no surprise, but I did not make many friends as a kid. The friends I did make, I lost for different reasons. Sometimes it was moving to different classes the next year. Other times they made new friends, which of course happens at that age. As far as I can remember, I reserved the aggression for others, but maybe I directed it at them.
Whatever the cause, there was not a lot of continuity in my relationships during my childhood. This would later translate into bigger problems as I got older. I went to a different middle school from everyone I had grown up with. My school district had three public middle schools that we would go to. Almost every kid from my elementary school would go to the middle school the next block over. I only had one friend going into my new school.
We met in our after school daycare program for elementary school and both transferred to the middle school program. For the following three years, despite never being in the same class, we remained good friends. He was my first real and first best friend.
I did not need to be vulnerable with him, but I also did not need to hide parts of myself. I could just be for the first time I could remember. His friendship saved me in a way. We of course made other friends at school and would spend breaks and lunches during the school day with kids from our classes. But before school and after school, we spent a lot of time together and made more friends through this after school program. The same kids were there every day and the turnover happened at the end of each year. But for three years, I was able to make and maintain friends.
During my final year of middle school, a lot changed.
- A new middle school opened and most of my friends from my classes transferred to the new school.
- A new group of students transferred from another school in the district to fill their seats.
- A teacher I had for the second year in a row identified my talent for math and science and encouraged me in ways that no adult had for years.
- I realized that if I was less hostile towards the world, I could interact with people.
- I made several more friends, one who I still talk to.
These things went on without me having to feel like I was being vulnerable. I chipped away at some of that armor. I had an adult and friends who showed me I had value.
By this time, I had been writing for over a year. I wrote down my thoughts. I wrote terrible poetry and short stories. I found a low-risk way to be vulnerable and to explore myself.
There were two high schools in the district. I went to one and my two closest friends went to the other. I had made enough friends going to the same high school to not feel like I was starting all over again.
Things were improving. I was building friendships and opening up a bit with different groups. I made a couple of other friends, like me, who struggled with vulnerability, connecting, and hiding. These friends meant a lot to me. I did not realize it at the time, but I felt the strongest connection to them because I could see my pain and fears reflected in them.
I was sexually assaulted for the first time when I was fourteen—yes, the first time. It was a person I knew and invited into my life, and it did not look like the crimes committed on Law and Order: SVU. I did not have the language, understanding, or support network to work through or even acknowledge what happened. Calling it what it was meant being vulnerable and acknowledging my vulnerability in that moment. Telling someone meant being vulnerable. I could not let that happen.
This secret I was keeping from myself changed me. I switched friend groups, again—which worked out for me because I made great friends after this. I also withdrew, returning the anger of my childhood by not speaking, not eating much, and closing my door as much as possible.
I also picked up patterns that were different from my childhood. My thoughts and my writing turned much darker. I put up more walls between me and other people and stopped caring about them. I stopped worrying about my safety or what happened to me. I spent most of my free time walking around the city alone, often between 10 pm and 1 am.
Even though I had made friends, I still had no one to talk to. More importantly, I could not even talk through it with myself. I pushed through and went about my life, picking up more risk-taking behaviors where I could find them.
One night, when I was seventeen, I finally told someone. I let myself say it out loud, more to myself than to him. It was liberating. For years, I felt this need to hide this trauma, my vulnerability, and, in the end, myself. Acknowledging something bad happened to me and being vulnerable lifted the burden. In that moment, I had been vulnerable and nothing bad happened.
It has been twelve years since I first told someone. In these past twelve years, I have been sexually assaulted and physically assaulted on separate occasions. There was a time where I considered both of these men friends. It took much less time to acknowledge these events. It took even less time for me to be able to speak about them. I had live that shame, pain, and sense of loss before. I had learned that by remaining silent, I was only hurting myself more.
I did not need support networks to face these events. I had learned that as well. I needed to be honest with myself about what had happened and what I needed to feel better.
At the time of the last assault, I had lived in Santa Barbara for four years and had some strong friendships and a support network. It did make the process less lonely. I had people to talk to–people who knew about my past experiences and how hard it was for me to feel vulnerable.
I no longer live in a city where I have support networks or friends. I moved from Santa Barbara, where both events happened, to Boston, to Milan, to Brussels.
These traumas from my past are fifteen, seven, and five years behind me. They are by no means the most interesting things about me. But I go out of my way to hide these details about my life.
When people ask me why I left California, I tell them half-truths. I tell them I wanted change or that I wanted new adventures. I did. I also wanted to get away from an environment where this kind of behavior is considered acceptable or excusable—which happened. I do not tell people I left because two men I once considered friends assaulted me. Nobody wants to hear that answer, even if it influenced my decision more than the reasons I give.
I also do not tell people I left because a friend of mine died. He was one of those people whose pain reflected my own—a person I had a strong bond with that I did not understand at the time. After hearing about his death, I kept thinking about how we discussed our shared dreams of traveling and writing. He did not have time to do these. I might not either.
There was a moment several months earlier where I believed the guy who physically attacked me was going to kill me. It was the closest I had ever felt to death in my life. It was worse than almost drowning, worse than having men trying to talk me into their cars as a teenager walking around late at night. The year before, the other one joked that he should kill me.
What if I do not have time to write?
What if I do not have time to travel?
I left California to use the time I have, however much that may be, to pursue my goals. I left because I was afraid there would be a next time where someone might follow through.
I left California because I did not want to die there. I left California because I did not want to die before I had a chance to even live.
I do not tell people any of this. They think they are asking a harmless question when they ask why I left. They are not looking for this kind of answer. I am not eager to provide it; it shares too much of myself with people I do not know well enough to trust.
But at what point can you bring that up with people you become friends with? You cannot go out for a beer and mention that one time you thought someone was about to kill you then discuss the book you are reading. I no longer tell people unless it comes up. I am back to hiding, but this time, it is not from myself.
Being a survivor is not the most important part of who I am, but it significantly influenced my life. Life is messy. Being human is messy. Telling people, especially new people, demands a level of vulnerability I am not yet equipped for.
But what if I do not have time?