So, it's a strange morning. I find myself recovering from what feels like a very long night. Whatever sleep I got seems to have evaporated, and I feel so exhausted this morning that I could burrow under covers and not come up for air for the whole day. Late pregnancy is a contributing factor, I'm sure.
I had intentions about today--not energy, but at least intentions. My husband mentioned his plans this weekend to tackle the last details of preparing our home for our daughter's arrival. I obstinately intended to tackle as many of those details as possible myself today to lighten his load so I could squirrel away every little sliver of time we have left just the two of us to cuddle, wax nostalgic and just be. It didn't matter that subconsciously I know that for every task I think of to take off his list, he will replace it with two more that he didn't think he would fit in because he anticipated I would contribute less to the scope. It's not that he would question my good intentions, but more that he knows that I am physically drained by this pregnancy and I often accomplish very little that I hope to.
As I watched news events unfolding about my hometown on social media yesterday and last night, I thought I would find a way to squeeze in some deep thinking about the world and what everything means.
I went to bed thinking I would write today, and thinking I had a straightforward pattern of thought with which to form everything. This morning, I find myself feeling a sense of surreality and concern that with my chopstick mind, everything I am thinking about is just this unhinged stream of consciousness that I can't properly assemble.
It was a night of strange dreams and odd circumstances. In my early years, I frequently had nightmares--bordering on night terrors. I remember multiple occasions having dreams so vivid that when I described them, my mom thought the things I was talking about had actually happened, and on at least one occasion, it drove her to knock on our neighbor's door in the middle of the night to confront her about things I dreamed she had done. It was crazy.
Over time, I think my brain rewired. These days, I very infrequently remember anything I dream about. Periodically, I have dreamed of things that happened to me growing up, and other horrible things. Those are always rough nights. I think the rewiring is a defense mechanism of sorts. Somehow my brain doesn't allow me to remember many dreams, because, possibly, if I did I wouldn't be able to leave as much of my past in my past as I do. Even on my best days, I probably don't find myself able to leave as much behind as I wish I could.
I had a strange dream about giving birth to my daughter last night--the only one I've had so far. People have told me that they don't remember the pain of childbirth and that this is Mother Nature's way of allowing women to repeat the act in spite of the pain. All I know is this morning, I wish I remembered more about my dream. I had other dreams too--lots of porch lights in all of them. One of them was a weird, almost survivalist type dream where the world had come unglued and I found myself completely terrified that there was no place safe, and that no person could be trusted not to cause harm. In this dream I remember looking to my husband and being filled with fear and saying the words "I am terrified that there is no one in the world that I can ever trust, and no place that is safe." Even in my dream, I knew that I was just placating him when I hastily clarified that I felt that way about everything except him.
The truth of the matter is that even in the real world that isn't a dream, but those hastily added words are very much true. I do find myself trusting in very few things, people and places that aren't associated with him. I feel compelled to say that--first because it's true and secondly because I so pointedly said that it didn't ring true in that dream.
Aside from the dreams, our power went out in the middle of the night, and while the pitch black and even more profound silence should have made it all the easier to sleep, the systematic checking into why and trying to take care of it that is the very nature of my husband proved as disruptive as all the dreams. And there were also all the visions of porch lights to which my mind kept drifting.
As I am sitting here this morning, trying to regroup and straighten my thoughts from the night, I am watching talking heads blather on about some "games" thousands of miles away, imminent weather events along our eastern coastline, fashion and nonsense that isn't any more news than if Justin Bieber will eventually be deported for all of his antics (which I think are strategic). And as I watch them, all I can think about is a family in the town in which I grew up--a family that will never hear their little girl's voice again. They will never get to hold her again. They didn't even get to say goodbye.
Maybe that's why my brain is so out of sorts this morning. I think about the night my husband drove from Kansas City to Joplin and arrived to find a place filled with chaos and destruction. Within a week, I found myself there and I could take in the visual inventory of the scene and understand much of what had impacted him so deeply. But I wasn't there the night it happened, and it wasn't my hometown. As I sit here this morning, now two weeks away from my due date, I wonder, is the kidnapping and murder of a 10-year-old little girl "my Joplin?"
I haven't cared about my hometown for years. It's been a place of bad memories, lost family and friends, and no hope for me. Until yesterday, the only recent additional considerations were the closing of my favorite Chinese restaurant due to health code violations that I am sure every other Chinese restaurant in town is guilty of too, and the fact that yet another person in my family failed to surprise me with their inability to make even the smallest effort to care about my family and me.
There's not much I can think of in the way of redemption for this town--at least not in my heart. And yet, when a former classmate virtually invited me to turn on my porch light last night to honor the memory of that no longer breathing and playing little girl, I quietly did so. This morning, as I watch the bobble heads of morning television laughing away and bantering about things that are going on all over the world, there's no mention of porch lights on in the middle of the day in Australia. There's no mention of porch lights on in all 50 United States and multiple other countries all over the world remembering this little girl. I find myself confused by it all.
As I flitted through Facebook posts this morning, I ran across one post regarding a petition that demands the perpetrators of crimes like these immediately face castration and the death penalty. I am a hardcore liberal and I have a very hard time with the death penalty. Theoretically, I do believe in "eye for an eye." That probably comes as a shock to those who know me and my liberal leanings so well, but in truth, when you have been "harmed" it's easy to justify the vengeful heart so fervently supported by this Old Testament phrase. The only problems I have when it comes right down to it is that I know there are innocent people in the prison system and innocent people on death row. I also know that even the most truly guilty often sit on death row for dozens of years while perpetual appeals attempt to save them. And unfortunately, I don't believe the crimes that truly merit the death penalty are deterred by it.
I'm not a psychologist. I am not an expert of any kind when it comes to profiling monsters. But I believe monsters are not built with the same brains that the rest of us, or even common criminals are built with.
A thief knows that stealing is a crime and that they need to work not to be caught. They know that there are consequences they wish to avoid, and most of the time those consequences are just dealing with the bad end of the law. Occasionally, thieves go too far in their pursuit of whatever it is they are stealing and there might be casualties. They may indeed cause bodily harm to someone.
I don't believe monsters think that way. I think the only consequences they are equipped to consider are when their master fantasies fail to meet their expectations--when their ultimate fantasy of destruction and death doesn't fulfill every twisted desire they craved. That's why they often repeat their efforts--in pursuit of the perfect fantasy fulfillment.
It may be that this is at least part of the reason I consider myself to be an agnostic. You hear people say things like "It's not our right to play God," when it comes to the application of punishments like the death penalty. I understand that phrase, and it's probably true. But I can't reconcile God "playing God" and allowing the creation of monsters, and I am not interested in any of the arguments that believers have for why it happens and why we should all soldier on and have faith in spite of it. I believe all monsters should be put down. I believe no monster can be altered to safely exist anywhere. My worries about the accurate application of the death penalty in every single case is the only thing that gives me pause. I don't care about the idea of deterrence, because in the case of monsters, I don't believe they can be deterred. I believe that if they say they are reformed, it's only so they can go back out into the world and resume their fantasies. They cannot be altered by anything.
So what's the answer? I don't know.
We moved to Arkansas about six months ago. Very recently there has been a public service announcement airing on local stations about the number of traffic-related fatalities that take place in my new state each year. The premise is that someone is talking to "the man (or woman) on the street" about how many fatalities occur in Arkansas every year. Everyone guesses wrong. Apparently the number is around 500. The interviewer follows up by saying that the state is trying to reduce that number, and they wonder how many traffic-related fatalities the state should try to reduce the number by. There are various answers, ranging from numbers like half and more ambitious numbers like just 100. The final question is how many traffic-related fatalities the individual would be willing to accept in their own family. Every person unequivocally answers "zero." No one would be willing to accept even one traffic-related death in their own family.
It's a moment in which the message is clear. How can we think it's all right for someone else to accept a terrible fate we are unwilling to accept ourselves?
And a message like that magnifies the idea that none of us goes through our days anticipating that something horrible will happen to us or to someone in our families. None of us is prepared to lose a loved one in any kind of event. And no matter how aware we all might be that the world isn't as "safe as it once was," we still live our lives with the unconscious thought that these are things that happen to someone else.
It's sobering, and I know my friends that often worry I filter the negative in the world more slowly than the positive, so it has a greater opportunity to impact me, will cry "doom and gloom." It's true. This is a little doom and gloom, especially as I try to joyfully prepare for the arrival of my own little girl. I don't mean for it to be doom and gloom. Truly. There's a lot to be so very happy about.
As the last month or so of my pregnancy has sped away, I have found the hormonal waves that occasionally hit me sweeping me down a river of tearful anxiety and concern about changes that may or may not come to be in a marriage that is more solid than it has ever been, and my ability to be everything my daughter will need or want. I know all of it will probably be fine, but we can't always control what we are thinking and feeling in the moment.
My mixed up brain this morning struggles with weird exhaustion, a seemingly disconnected world caught up in Vodka and makeovers, the further degradation of a town my soul thought it didn't need to mourn, and a family that has lost a little girl.
The demons associated with what may come after my daughter arrives aren't real. Life will continue to move forward with love and joy in my life. I know that.
As for the other demons wound up in dreams, porch lights and my hometown--I sadly think those are all real. I think as sure as a chunk of my husband's hometown was swept up and swirled away by a storm almost three years ago, in the last 48 hours, a chunk--or maybe even all that was left of mine got swirled away as well. I will recover from that loss, because I have long been recovering from a lost sense of an unreal home. In essence, I got a head start on "losing" my hometown many years ago. Luckily, with the construction of what my husband refers to as our "Nation of Two" and the building of our own little family, there are fewer holes for me to fill.
But as full as my own life is about to become, I can't imagine the hole left in the family of that little girl. And I can't help but think of the toll that must be paid every time the rest of us discover that there is a monster in our midst. They are so well concealed from us, and almost always in plain site. I don't know how there can be a better way--a way where nobody has to pay the price of such discovery. That is the biggest hole of all.
Beautifully written.
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