What We Know

 In most academic writing one has to draw clear lines to illustrate how they know every single thing they know.  Basically, any assertion made has to a) build to a single argument and b) have come from another book or published research.  Other ways of knowing are not accepted.  Not building up to a single answer is not accepted.  You know how I feel about that.*  But we’re not writing that way (anymore).  We are trying to discover what we know, what we contain and what it means about how we act and react in the world.  That means acknowledging all of our ways of knowing.  

Below, in blue, is an essay excerpted from my book, originally published in Referential Magazine (a beautiful online publication you should check out).  In it, I took the topic of fear and tried to figure out what I know about it.  I considered my childhood exposure to horror movies, my nightmares, what I’ve read about the psychophysiology of trauma, conversations with beautiful people I’ve known–all with equal weight.

Fear

I had my first nightmare when I was four. I had the chickenpox and dreamed that Raggedy Ann and Andy came over to play and knocked over the fishbowl.

I have a nightmare that someone is following me in a car as I’m walking on a bridge. I run, but can’t get away. I know that I am dreaming, but when I open my eyes, all I can see is the inside of my eye mask and the darkness returns me to the bridge. I discontinue the medication.

When I was seven, I watched Child’s Play with my mother and sisters. In this movie, a doll goes on a killing spree. For years I had to put my dolls out of sight before I could sleep. It’s possible that I never outgrew this fear at all, but outgrew playing with dolls.

Charlie visits with the soldier who replaced him in his unit after he was injured. The replacement soldier was himself injured within twelve hours, and Charlie goes to see him every day. I ask if he can leave the hospital. He’s allowed to leave, but he doesn’t want to. They tell us we’re safe now, but we’ve spent so much time being afraid we don’t believe them.

I have another nightmare. I am on post after a long day of work. Everywhere I go rapists lurk in the shadows. I outrun them. Finally, another woman offers me a ride, getting out of her car to flag me down. As I get in, someone grabs her. I don’t get out to help. I drive away in her car to save myself. I know that I am not strong enough to save her. When I wake, I am frozen in bed, my heart pounding, my throat dry. I wonder how people live like this.

At the art table, patients discuss their nightmares. Not the particulars of them but the fact of them, the ways they cope with them. Therapy dogs trained for nightmare interruption and the many sleep meds they’ve tried. When I went home for Christmas, my parents told me I scream in my sleep. Another responds, Yeah, my ex-boyfriend told me the same thing. The point of the medication they are on is that you don’t remember the nightmares.But how can the body not remember?

We are eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria. My dining companion is a Marine who works here. He has deployed four times and will be leaving again in a month, first to train new recruits in the desert in California and then to lead them into battle. He eats with his elbows on the table, broad shoulders hunched. He has a burst blood vessel in his left eye. It flashes as he surveys the room between bites. You know that feeling you get, when you wake up to a noise in the middle of the night and you feel like there’s someone in the house? I nod. That’s what it’s like down-range. The whole time.

Because fear is an emotion that is so difficult to forget, it can be an easy one to write about.  But so is falling in love.  And making friends.  And feeling lonely.  The prompt is to take something you know well, have spent some time considering, and write what you know about that thing–let no source of knowledge be deemed insignificant–what you thought about it when you were a kid, what you read about it, what you overheard about it.  Just take a topic, set a timer and write for that good old fashioned 20 minutes we always talk about. Put on some good music that will keep your fingers flying.**

*if you’re new here, “fuck that” is how I feel about that.

**I’ve been listening to this to write lately.