The Call That Changed The Rest Of My Life
It was a hot summer day in June when the phone rang. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting in my co-worker’s car with my boss and my other co-worker. We were driving back, laughing and being joyful because we had just successfully finished training hundreds of managers at the Renton Boeing location.
I remember being fulfilled and happy and feeling satisfied knowing my work was making an impact and had a purpose. That's when my cell phone rang, and I almost didn't answer it. It was a call from an unknown number, and I would usually let those calls go straight to my voicemail.
But this call I picked up. And it changed the rest of my life.
It was my nine-year-old son, Sean.
"Hi Mom! I'm at the neighbor’s house. Someone kicked in the front door. I didn't go in. I just came to Nate's.” He paused to hear my affirmation that he did the right thing.
“You are at Nate's. Great. Stay there. The front door was kicked in. Yes, stay at Nate's. I'm on my way home. Stay there. I'll be home soon.”
I don't know what you tell your nine-year-old son when you are freaking out inside, but you don't want to show it. All I came up with was to go into robot mode. I just repeated what he said and focused on him staying safe and staying with our neighbors.
I hung up the phone. The laughter and cheer had gone silent in the car. Everyone heard what happened and everyone was shocked. They didn't know what to say either.
"Please get me home safe as soon as possible" I said.
"Sure” said the driver.
Even though cars, trees, and buildings were passing by us on the highway, time seemed like it was moving really slow. I wanted to be home right away, hug my son, and tell him everything would be okay. But maybe it was better I was still in the car because that would have been the lie. A big fat lie.
Everything changed with that phone call.
"I have to tell my husband" I heard a voice in my head. So, I dialed his number and when he picked up, I just repeated what Sean told me earlier. My voice was still robot-like, no emotions, just facts and cold information-sharing.
"I will leave work now and go home. See you when you get here.” I heard him reply.
I hung up the phone again. The rest of the drive was a blur. I don't remember if I spoke again or if I was just screaming inside my head.
My next memory starts with being dropped off in front of my house. I remember walking towards my front door and feeling a flood of different emotions. I was scared, mad, ready-to-fight, to punch, to run, to scream. I really didn't know how I felt.
When I got to my front doorsteps, I saw my door. It was like in the movies. Kicked in and partially still attached by the bottom hinges. It didn't look like my door I left locked that morning. Yet, it was the same door that gave way to strangers to walk into my house. As I walked in, my husband greeted me in the family room. He was reading the police report. After I called him, he called the police and an officer had just left our house. I must have missed him by minutes.
Then I heard “Mom!” as my son was running towards me. I still didn't want to lie to him, so instead of words, we ran into each other's arms and hugged for what seemed like a long time. That hug was the beginning of my awareness and intentional choice of what would matter in my life – and what would fade in its value.
The strangers who broke into our home left a movie like scene behind. Papers scattered on the floor and drawers left open. In the bedroom all my closet doors and drawers were open with some of my clothes thrown on the floor, on the bed, and all-around. It appeared the stranger spent most of their time and search in the bedroom and then moved to the office. "They were about to take the TV, too" said my husband “but something or someone must have spooked them because they left it behind and took off.” The TV was turned sideways like when you want to disconnect it from the cables. Our patio doors were wide open and there was a light breeze through the house as the front door now served only to remind us of what had happened earlier that day.
I was standing in my bedroom, and I remember feeling like a visitor. One who comes to see something with purpose and with curiosity but is not emotionally connected to what she sees. For a second, I thought this was all someone else's mess to deal with, not mine, and I could go home to my neat and clean place.
But that wasn’t reality. My mind created a false picture of reality to ensure I would survive. I knew it was lying to me, but it felt good. So, I allowed myself to be lied to and to feel good (good being equal to not letting my emotions surface, pushing them down and keeping them out of my conscious). Maybe because I didn't want to scare my son. Maybe because I didn't want to appear weak. Maybe because I believed parents cannot show pain and struggle to their kids. Because I didn't know how to process all that had happened, nor did I know how to handle what was following next.
And if I didn't know and felt like I had no control over who broke into our home, how would I keep him safe? How would I keep him safe? This kept playing over and over in my head.
Interesting how in situations of trauma as adults our default point of view shifts from self to someone who we care about the most: our children, our spouses, our parents, our friends, or our pets. I wonder how children’s point of view shift when they experience trauma.
One could argue that I didn't actually experience trauma. And to tell the truth, for months I didn't know either that I had. I had only one previous experience like this in my life to compare it to. One that happened many years ago. It’s a memory of a gypsy woman on one of my tram rides. When I was in elementary school, we didn't own a car yet. But we had access to the local tram lines. With my student ID card, I received a 50% off discount for a monthly tram pass so, instead of my parents taking me to school every day, I would ride the tram by myself for two stops. As I became older and got used to riding the tram, I would ask permission to ride further - to the city library, to the city center, to the park, or to the museum. My parents let me become independent at a young age, but also warned me what to look out for. I was to look out for the people who picked your pockets and took your stuff. I learned to watch people and quickly figure out their intentions on the tram. One day, I boarded the tram and as usual, I stood in the very back of the cart with my backpack securely pushed against the window. The tram started moving when I noticed a gypsy woman. She was making her way to the back from the front doors.
She wasn't looking for an empty seat like other people would. She was searching for an opportunity. As she was approaching the back of the tram our eyes met. She was focused on me. I felt like she was ready to jump on me. I saw violence, pain, and hurt in her eyes. She stared me down like a predator would a prey that had nowhere to run or hide. I was young but not afraid. I held my eyes locked on her, too. I was not going to back down and I was curious. The gypsy woman looked at the person standing between us. Then she looked back at me. Her eyes had a message specifically for me “If you say any word, I will get you”. Then she turned towards that person between us and slowly opened the zipper of her backpack and took out her wallet. I was standing in silence watching it all unfold. Before I realized what had just happened the tram stopped, the doors opened, and the gypsy woman jumped off the cart. New passengers got on and she vanished. Then the doors closed, and the tram was moving again.
Was that trauma? I don't know. I haven't told anyone about it for years. I couldn't explain why I behaved the way I had behaved.
This time it felt different though. Something has been taken that was mine. Something that meant a lot to me. But I only realized it meant a lot after it had been taken away from me.
After that day the world became less safe, less friendly, and less peaceful.
I started locking myself inside my home - from the inside of my mind. I looked at my belonging as things to hide, to put away, and to protect.
What if the strangers come back?
Every time we would leave the house to go to work, to school, or shopping my mind flooded with thoughts about being broken into again.
Coming home was the worst. My level of anxiety would reach peak levels as soon as we turned onto our street. One time, my husband accidentally left the lights on in the shop so when we got close enough for me to see the lights were on, I almost got a panic attack. I thought it happened again. “The strangers were back. Maybe they are in my house right now.”
The worst was that for over a few months, well after I returned to work, every time someone would ask me about the break in, I would bawl my eyes out. I knew they cared about me and wanted to check in, yet just the simple mentioning of the event would tip me over and I would be crying.
I had never experienced anything like that before. And the most surprising thing was that I couldn’t control my reactions. Even if I told myself I would not cry, the next time I would do it again – I would cry again.
I was aware enough of my behavior to notice I had started to lose myself instead of going through this process. I became afraid of people, scared of leaving my house and arriving home, closed in and didn't want to talk to anyone about anything anymore. I was so hurt and in pain that I wanted to lock myself in my house. To protect and defend myself. I didn't want to go out, didn't want to go on long trips, and I didn't want to know the world outside of my house anymore.
It took me awhile to realize I have given up my freedom for a false sense of safety and control. My fear was feeding on me imagining over and over again another break in. My thoughts were not letting go of me.
And then it hit me. I was grieving. My behavior suddenly made sense. I was going through my own grieving process. The signs became suddenly so obvious.
“How come I am grieving though?” I asked myself. I didn't lose anyone in the break in. “Why grief?” My curiosity was taking me deeper. First, I didn't want to go there. I noticed resistance in my mind.
We resist something not because we reject the new. We resist something because we want to hold on to what we have. Giving that up feels more painful than accepting the new. Our minds want us to choose either - or. I couldn't choose because I didn't know what I was holding onto. Thus, my journey into grief began. I accepted my situation even though I didn't understand it at the beginning. All what I knew was, and what it felt like was, that I was in the dark.
Being in the dark doesn't mean there isn't light in the world. And, being in the light doesn't mean there isn't dark. It simply means I was in either the light or the dark or moving from one to the other.
I started to discover more and more about what one can experience in the dark. Once I participated in a guided tour while visiting a cave. During our tour, the host told us to gather together halfway through because we were going to do an experiment. She asked us to turn off all our flashlights and for 60 seconds to experience the darkness of the cave. She said “For fun after 10 seconds open your eyes. You will be surprised how quickly your eyes adjust and you start seeing in the dark.”
Honestly, I didn't believe her. But I was doing the tour with my son, and I didn't want to not try it because I knew he would. (One of my guiding principles I teach my kids is to try something new once. Twice if you liked it).
So, I opened my eyes, and I was amazed. The same way I was amazed during my grief. Once I allowed myself to open up my inner eyes and see what grief looked like from the inside out, I was fascinated. Can you remember the first time you saw the night sky full of bright stars? It was a little bit like that.
I saw myself before the break in. I was striving for building a better life for my family - a better one than I had. Then I saw myself after the break in. I was striving for protecting myself from the inside out. I was building an invisible fort to protect my better life.
In the dark I saw the shining lights of this better life. Growing up poor with little to no material goods, my perspective of better was to have things - things I didn't have growing up.
When the strangers kicked our house door in, they took these things. When I looked at them in the dark, I realized they became shooting stars. They started fading and soon their lights became invisible.
Things weren't the true representation of a better life for me anymore.
I thought I needed those things to feel happy, fulfilled, and free to do and have everything I wanted. The truth was that when those things were taken, I felt like my happiness, my peace, my freedom was taken away. And in order to get them back I felt like I had to protect myself and my home from being broken in again.
But at what cost? I realized I was building a fortified fort and I was about to move the rest of my life in there. Together with the rest of my family and their future lives. I felt like I was about to close all the shades and curtains on the windows of my fort while thinking I was locking in the light.
What a pity self-preserving thought served up to me by my mind!
If I protect myself, I will never be free again. If I protect myself, I will never grow again.
So, in that dark place, in the middle of working hard to change my whole life for the worst, I saw the light. The light that has been guiding me all these years. The light that was warm, familiar, and inviting. It was outside the fort shining bright. I realized no number of inside lamps or candles could ever replace that light.
As I stood there, in my thoughts, without fearing the light, it started to get brighter in my heart and in my mind.
Suddenly, I realized what that light was. It was my freedom to live a life worth living for.
My parents did their best to give us kids a better life, yet they haven't, to this day, experienced what it is like to have freedom to choose to be their best selves - through the choices they make every single day. For me, a better life was to be able to choose to live life differently. Free to choose who I was, who I wanted to be, who I wanted to spend time with, and in what way I wanted to live and die.
In that moment I decided to let go. Just let go of the thought that I needed a fort, I needed to build my protection to feel safe, or that I had control over what would happen in my life.
I just let go.
A feeling of deep sadness took over my body. But I just let it go through me.
Let it go through me like the sight of passing trees along the road while driving on the highway. They are there for a second and then they are gone.
The sadness had no thought to attach itself to to create a memory in my mind. So, just as fast as it had appeared, it had also disappeared. My body relaxed and I felt warmth.
Only my mind kept continuing its campaign of melodrama, so I sat back and watched it try to convince me otherwise.
“What if... your things are taken again?”
“I will replace them with new ones if I choose to.” I answered.
“What if… your cars are stolen?
“I will buy a new or a used one if I want to drive a car again.”
“What if… your house burns down?”
“I will choose a different house to live in.”
“What if… your loved ones are taken from you?”
“I will cherish my time with them now and when the time comes to say goodbye, I will celebrate the life we had together. Worrying about losing them today already robs me from being fully present with them now. And that is like being dead while assuming I am alive. I choose to be alive, with them, and see them fully for who they are today.”
“What if… death takes everything away from you?”
“I choose to let death do that when it’s time rather than me taking everything away from me now.”
In the dark death had no power over me. I became curious about it and after some reading, a master class, and many honest discussions with others and myself, I was ready to choose my relationship with death and with life. (I share some resources below.)
In the dark death is the great equalizer because it surrounds all of us without us even knowing its exist. In the light death is clearly visible yet how we respond to it is up to us.
I chose to let go of its grip on me. My fear, like the trees along the road, still exists but then it goes away. And just like the road, I continue my life because I know there are many more beautiful places to visit, people to meet, and adventures to have. We were born to explore many roads, to find ourselves at many crossroads, and to discover the wilderness within us.
Choosing to live life differently starts with letting go.
I let go because I wanted to be free, I wanted to grow, and I wanted to live again.
Additional Resources:
- Trauma resources: https://thewisdomoftrauma.com/resources/
- Dr Gabor Maté - How Your Past Trauma Really Works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI6C3ahHpnc
- Byron Katie: https://thework.com/
- Esther Perel - On Death: https://www.estherperel.com/blog/letters-from-esther-what-death-can-teach-us-about-life
[More resources at the end of the article]
- Esther Perel - Workshop: What Death Can Teach Us About Life]