Living Into the Answers

I was five the day the police came looking for me. I could hear the whir of helicopter blades in the air outside and noticed a small crowd had gathered in the street in front of my apartment complex. My friend Jennifer and I peeked out gingerly from behind the curtains to see what all the fuss was about and then quickly closed them. Jennifer lived across the street in our shared apartment complex and was a year older than me. She had waist length brown hair and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and getting to play with an older friend, I felt important. Her purse looped over her shoulder; Jennifer’s mom had emphatically explained that we were not to answer the telephone or the front door under any circumstance while she was out running errands, stranger danger and all that. We were dutifully obedient, and spent the afternoon building Barbie houses and watching Land of the Lost.

From time to time someone would come to the door and knock, then ring the doorbell. We would glance up at each other and Jennifer would hold her finger to her lips giving me the “Shhhh” signal. I nodded in agreement each time. The afternoon passed quickly and I never once thought about the fact that I had only told my mother I was going outside to play, and not specifically that I was going to knock on Jennifer’s door to see if she could play too. The myopia of a five year old is a powerful thing.

I was stuffing an Oreo into my mouth when Jennifer’s mom returned home and rushed into the house in a panic. She quickly ushered me out the front door and my mother came running over to me arms waving frantically. Her face was red and contorted in a strange configuration of relief and anger and love. She grabbed me hard and swooped me into her arms. It was only then that I saw my father. What was he doing here? He lived four hours away in Houston. A wave of utter confusion swept over me. What had happened? Had someone died? And why were helicopters circling above our heads and neighbors crowding around us?

I would later learn that I had been gone for five hours without a trace. Apparently, I had been lost and had no idea. I had set off on my journey that day to find a friend to play with, and instead had traumatized my mother and father and unwittingly enlisted the services of the Dallas police department in a missing child case. A mother myself now, and what’s more, a bereaved mother, I can feel the complete desperation of my mother when I think of that afternoon. I wasn’t just missing, I was missing from HER.

Sometimes I’m that same bewildered girl who walked out of the apartment and surveyed the chaos I had been previously unaware of. Only now I’m 46 and I thought for sure I’d have it all figured out at this point. I look back from where I’m standing, and see myself pounding the floor with my fists the months after my daughter died, screaming my guttural WHY at the sky when I was afforded an hour alone in her room, her dress with ketchup still on it, soaked with tears, clutched against my chest. I see a perfectly constructed faith with every theological answer beautifully outlined, suddenly a heap of question marks at my feet. I hurt for that Amey. She kept a sticky note on her bathroom mirror that said “Brush your teeth” and she had to learn how to grocery shop in record time to get out before the tears came.

It’s an incredible gift, the ability to compartmentalize. The brain’s protective altering in order to keep us alive; to help us not be overcome so that we are still able to care for ourselves at the most basic level. The gift though, can become the master. In those fresh days of grief, I was raw, unfiltered pain. I was a walking, breathing, exposed, vulnerable nerve. Over time, and with practice, I could bat away an uncomfortable thought or painful memory as one bats away a gnat buzzing near the face. This was survival. This enabled me to care for my boys, maintain a household, and even graduate nursing school Magna Cum Laude and start a new career. But somewhere along the way, the lines blurred, until I unconsciously batted away every emotion. Once again, I did not realize I was missing.

We underestimate what it really takes to be a healthy adult when we are young, the intentional effort one must employ to not be overcome by heartache, grief, loss, lack of vision or apathy. Going back for yourself after losing your self takes bravery. Building a new self when the old one is just ashes is a monumental construction project. Admitting that you maybe never even had a self, but have been living your one wild and precious life for the expectations of others, is a heart hollowing discovery. But it’s the beginning of the work. Here you are. 

When I reframe my childhood story in my mind’s eye, I see 5 year old me stepping out the front door of that apartment into the chaos, bewildered and blank. Only now I am my mother, running towards myself, arms waving, tears streaming, anger, relief, love. “Where have you been!?” I cry, “Oh thank God.” I weep. “You’re here.”