LONG POST ALERT!!!!

    I’ve started this post over in my mind at least three times.  I started out “I’ve lived in fear for most of A’s life.”  Then I realized “I’ve lived in fear most of my adult life.”  Then I thought about it some more and realized that I’ve really lived in fear for most of my entire life!  When I was little I was as fearless as the next child.  I climbed onto the fence of the bull pen and then couldn’t get down and somebody had to come and rescue me before the bull figured out I was there.  I don’t remember wearing shoes in the summer until I was at least ten.  I stepped on a lot of bees.  And cigarette butts that were still burning.

    I don’t remember feeling fear until I had to go to school.  Like most kids when I got to a certain age I got excited about going to school.  As a toddler I lived next to a country school house and I watched the kids at recess.  I loved going shopping for pencils and stuff for school.  When I got there I learned very quickly that other kids could sense a weakness and take advantage of it.  I’d grown up around adults and had never been teased before.  I took it very personally and cried, which naturally made things worse.  After the first month of school I was transferred to a different school closer to home.  The very one I had lived next door to when I was younger.  We’d moved into a house “in town” when I was five and in the meantime a house had been built where our garden was, but I knew the school well. 

    There were two other kids who had been sent to the wrong school and we all started at the new one together.  Otherwise I didn’t know any of the other kids.  Because I was unfamiliar with teasing and bullying I lived in fear for my life.  My mother tried to teach me the old “sticks and stones” saw, but that really didn’t make the words hurt any less.  It didn’t help that I nearly died over the winter and missed a great deal of school.  When I got back I had to stay in at recess to catch up on my work.  I had a few friends, but only one lived near me and I was too little to walk to her house to play.

    Things didn’t change much as I grew because the bullies grew too and got even bullier.  In ninth grade the boy who sat across the aisle from me in study hall took a disliking to my dress and when the teacher wasn’t looking he would give me a punch to the arm.  By the end of the day I had a bruise that covered my entire upper arm.  Even though it was the spring and it was hot I wore long sleeves to cover it up.  One of the girls in my home ec class saw part of the bruise when I rolled up my sleeves and told the teacher.  The teacher made me show her the whole arm and marched me down to the principal’s office and he made me wait there while he called the boy down and made him apologize.  I’m not sure what fear turns into when it gets worse than terror, but I felt it.

    I spent most of high school afraid that there would never be someone for me to marry.  These were the early days of women’s lib when it was hoped that I could be whatever I wanted to be, but the reality would probably be I’d end up being a wife and mother - IF I could find a husband, which didn’t seem likely there.  So off to college I went.  I went to a small technical college in a big city, at least it was big to me then.  I’ve lived in much bigger cities since then.  But I digress.  There I was afraid I’d get lost.  I was afraid I couldn’t find my classes or get there on time.  I was afraid of so many, many things I can’t remember them all.  I made it through orientation, made a new friend, and found my way home again!  First day licked.  Second day I walked into typing class - on time I might add - and saw the scruffiest hippiest looking man I ever saw in my life.  My first thought was that it would kill my dad if I brought him home.  He was in every one of my classes.  I had to fight every shyness cell in my body to speak to him, but after the fourth class in a row I had to know if he was going to be in all of them, so I asked.  He was.  After the next day we spent every break together and started going out.  We got married nine months later.  Partly because we fell in love, partly because I never thought I’d find anybody else, and partly because I wanted to show everybody at home I could find somebody and get married before I was 19 or 20.  The wedding was one month before I turned 19.

    Then I lived in fear that he would leave me.  He threatened to regularly for 23 years.  Anytime he felt like I was getting beyond his control he would threaten.  We actually separated several times.  Once he threw me out of our apartment and I had to go back to my mother’s because he wanted me to quit my job and I didn’t want to.  He got his way because I didn’t have any choice but to pack up and go 100 miles back to my parents.  A month later we were back together again.  We separated again nine months later for financial reasons.  We each got better jobs in different places and started saving up so we could have a place of our own again.  I got hurt at work, he came to see me and because we didn’t end up having sex he asked for a divorce.  It felt like a punch to the gut.  I’d been working so hard to get back together and he’d been dating!  So I filed for divorce.  He came up for the hearing, one thing led to the other and the divorce was over.  Back together again.  It took six months.  After that he liked to pull out the D card every once in awhile.  More than once I was ready to go along with it, but he wouldn’t move out.  I didn’t think I could make it on my own.  I had no idea about spousal support after a certain number of years.

    Then A was born.  Perhaps the greatest fear of all came after I found out I was expecting A.  First I was afraid I couldn’t carry him the whole time.  I was afraid I would lose him, like the others.  A was baby number four and the only one I carried past the first two months.  Then I went into preterm labor at six months!  He was saved, but I lived for three months on bed rest - not as easy as you’d think!  Then he didn’t move!  You couldn’t make that kid move for anything!  Not even the occasional foot sticking out of my belly!  Nothing!  After he was born I was afraid of SIDS.  Then it was abduction.  I never let him out of my sight.  The hardest thing was baby and me classes.  He was going to have to be an only.  There was too much risk to my life to try again.  I didn’t want him to grow up like I did without any other kids around.

    Aside from the fear for A these were wonderful, happy, challenging years when we were a real family.  His dad got a great job.  We bought a beautiful house and two cars.  Dad left for work at a little before seven.  A was pre-programmed to wake up at 6:30 (I swear he was born waking up at 6:30 every morning!).  He would climb out of his crib and race down the hall to see his dad before he left for work.  He went to a day care where he was well watched and protected. 

    We lived in a small town, the kind where everybody knows everybody else, even if it isn’t by name.  They had a fall festival with a one K race for kids.  A wanted to run in that race so badly.  He was an athletic kid who loved to run and climb on anything, including the piles of dirt and machines at the construction site across the street - under strict supervision!  He trained for that race by running around our block with me following him.  The day of the race comes and dad picks a big fight over whether he should run or not.  Dad says no.  I don’t want to let him down so we leave dad in a snit.  Problem: the plan was for Dad to be on one end of the race and I was going to be on the other.  Now there’s only one of us.  There is a landmark at the end of the race and A is told to go to that landmark and not leave it until I get there.  He knows about stranger danger.  I can walk faster than a four year old can run can’t I?  It’s only three blocks.  I take photos of the race starting then get out of the way and head for the other end at a fast pace.  I don’t make it in time for the end of the race.  A is no where to be found.  I find neighbors and ask.  They haven’t seen him.  I panic.  I walk back to the other end in case he’s gone to find me.  No A.  Back to the finish where I fall apart asking everybody I can find.  Finally a policeman is coming to help when someone asks if that’s him across the street.  IT IS!  I run to him crying my eyes out in relief.  He can’t imagine what’s wrong and the woman holding his hand tries to explain.  She saw him faltering toward the end and went out to encourage him, then took him to look for me.  I must have passed them at least twice.  I can’t believe what I’m hearing, but he’s safe in my arms trying to comfort me, to get me to stop crying because it’s ok.  He never leaves my sight again until he’s 13 at the county fair with a group of friends and still I was afraid the whole time!.  I can still feel that panic and terror today as I’m writing this.

    I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from that sick feeling of terror.  It never leaves me.  Even when I leave him outside in the car to wait for me while I shop of get him a book or get our food.  He’s almost 18 and I don’t think I will ever stop being afraid that he’ll hurt himself and I won’t be there to help him.  I know he can defend himself now and he can call for help.  He’s six and a half feet tall and weighs nearly 200 pounds!  He knows how to defend himself.  I think I’ll be afraid for him until the day I die.