Day 13

November 1, 2007

Though i know i'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know i'll often stop and think about them
In my life i love you more
In my life i love you more

John Lennon "In My Life"



When I was 13, I ran away from home. I stayed away for 2 nights, sleeping in a baseball dugout and wearing lots of layers. I was mad at my mom, who I thought was treating me unfairly. In addition she was dating a strange man who rode a Harley and had a ponytail. I was ashamed of her and embarrassed by her behavior.

Finally after two days of sleeping in the cold I swallowed my pride and began the slow walk home. When I got about a block from my house, I noticed a great deal of activity on the street and was curious about what might be going on. As I got closer I noticed there was a police car in front of my house. I was sure they were looking for me and I was scared to death.

This was not the case. As I walked up to my lawn my sister saw me and came running at me screaming in anguish. I was confused. I was only gone two days and we weren't particularly close to begin with. Her sobbing and screams were utterly hysterical, and to this day I've never been able to get this tone out of my mind. Finally, I was able to make out a bit of what she was saying. It was my mother. She had overdosed on a combination of pills and alcohol. My mother was dead.

The pain didn't start then, not yet. Numbness and dissociation are often the first responses to trauma. That day was too unreal and too unbelievable to remember.

Only it wasn't. Although small details escaped me, the emotional pain of that moment left a deep and indelible hole in my heart and in my soul. This pain has been my driving force, my magnetic north, and shaped everything I've ever done since and ever hoped to be. Much of the good I hoped to do in life can be traced to that day and to that moment.

But.....Although I believed for years I had made some peace with this event, I know this is a terrible and haunting lie that ultimately made me nearly drink myself to death.

This is the first time I've told this story in nearly ten years. I told it to my therapist and relived that day today in all of its terrible detail. I am psychologically drained but also feel like an incredible weight has been removed. This secret has been a vicious undertow pulling me down for the last 25 years.

I am afraid to go to sleep tonight, fearing like Hamlet "what dreams may come." I am deeply troubled but I am better. In a strange and absurd way I am better, although I am quite literally haunted by what occurred today. I'm very aware that people must often get worse before they get better. For tonight at least, if I do sleep, I will sleep in the belly of the whale. But I will emerge. Must emerge.