A Bump In The Night
I’m lying in bed. Sleep just won’t come as I endlessly doom scroll on my phone. This is a normal routine for me. Just as my eyes begin to feel heavy, my heeler/English pointer mix starts a fever pitch of frantic barking. He’s going nuts. He heard something. I thought I may have heard faint thunder, or perhaps a car door. The former is likely, the latter is a tad ominous given that it’s right around midnight. I yell at the dog and he just won’t quit. Something’s got his hackles up. Now the hair on the back of my neck is starting to do the same. I sit up in bed and open the app for my security cameras. I check the front facing cameras and then I see it. The driver’s side interior light is on in my truck. I throw on a pair of basketball shorts and a ratty T-shirt, step into my new balances, and pull the Smith and Wesson compact 9mm from my night stand. Picture an 80’s Rambo montage with me getting ready for battle as I rack a round and open my bedroom door. It’s cowabunga time.
The way that my dog is barking makes me feel like someone may be inside the house. I get that sinking feeling as I open the bedroom door, gun drawn, and Max (my hound) in full mutt rage runs barking down the hallway; hollering his head off as he goes. This isn’t good. I sweep the interior rooms on the way to the front door. There’s nothing in the kitchen, foyer, dining room and lastly nothing in the living room. I make my way back to the front door, flip the lights on, crack door and cut angles out the door like I learned a lifetime ago. In my mind I’m moving like liquid mercury. A tactical wizard. The security camera will later betray my combat prowess as it showcases my Frankenstein-like movements. I round the corner of my driveway and see nothing. I check the door on my truck, still locked. I hit the key fob and enter my truck; I kill the overhead light and check for any signs of disturbance. Nothing looks any more out of place than normal. Weird. This guy is good, whoever he is. A real pro.
I made my way back into the house. Pet the dog, despite my prior annoyance at his incessant barking to alert me, he’s doing his job and I can’t be mad at that. It’s what he was designed to do. I dropped the magazine from the firearm, cleared the round from the chamber, and holstered my weapon. I secured it back in my night stand. As I got back into bed, I shook my head to see my wife with her back to the door sound asleep. If I’m hypervigilant she’s whatever the exact opposite of that is. During the melee of barking and frantic dressing by me she didn’t even wake up. Before I went outside, I tried to wake her, but she just groggily sat up and mumbled something about cupcakes. This is life or death (at least that’s what I thought at the time) and she can’t even wake up. Must be nice.
I stayed up for the next two or three hours with my eyes bouncing between security cameras on the mobile app. My focus shifted from my truck, to the side yard, to the front door, and back again. With burning eyes, I was like some kind of obsessed voyeur. Every time I would get sleepy and nod off for a half second, my fight or flight nerves would shock me awake. I wasn’t afraid of confrontation; I was afraid I wouldn’t be ready if something did happen. I didn’t want to be caught off guard. This is also the reason that all the doors in my house have to be shut at night and I sleep facing the door. I don’t want anyone to get the drop on me. This likely isn’t normal behavior. Unless you’re a GWOT veteran, then I imagine I’m speaking a language we all understand.
I am thankful for the valuable lessons I learned in my short six year stint in the Army National Guard, and subsequently during my combat tour to Iraq. I remember having this same fear panic if I ever got sleepy in the truck while we did night convoys. I never wanted to miss a threat or let my team down. Sleep became the enemy I fought the hardest against. We were hammered daily with signs all over the various bases we visited that said “Complacency Kills.” I imagine some level of that rebellion against complacency keeps me up late some nights. When I find myself scanning my sector and searching for threats in my peaceful neighborhood, I’m faced with the reality that the only dangers are in my mind.
I realize being prepared and vigilant are good things. The problem comes in when the anxiety amps up and you begin to create threats that may or may not even be real. I’m afraid to say sometimes, as evidenced above, I find myself prepared to repel self-perceived threats. I want to snap myself out of this place and remind myself that I’m not in a combat zone, no one wants to hurt me, and I live in a mostly peaceful society. Except when I don’t. That’s the irony of this dichotomy. The violence in the city adjacent to my small town is amping up with murders and gang violence on a daily basis according to blurbs on the local news and press briefings from our Sheriff. So, even though I’m not wrong to be prepared for violence, the likelihood is still way smaller than the reality of it occurring here.
I think a lot about the nature of PTSD, and how trauma can impact people for the rest of their lives. I am not one of those veterans that will shout about my PTSD from the rooftops in some attempt to certify my experiences. I’m not aiming to gain some sort of cultural nod from the uninitiated public, but this is something I live with. I am not proud of it, nor do I try to wear it on my sleeves. I feel ashamed to have the triggers I do and often it makes me feel weak. I’ve frequently rationalized that PTSD is a natural response to the traumas we faced in Iraq. Our mission overseas tended to keep us reactive and not proactive in a combat zone. That hyper alertness kept me on edge for a long time when I first came home from war.
I remember driving on the interstate the first few months after my homecoming and cringing at every overpass and piece of trash on the side of the road. Our training conditioned us to be wary of anything that would indicate an IED, like trash or dead animals on the side of the road. As a gunner in a gun truck, I was blasted with the idea that every overpass had head high wires designed to decapitate the gunner, so I always had to duck and cover with the .50 Cal as we went under each bridge over there. It took a while to snap out of that mindset on my way to my college classes afterwards. It made since back then, but why am I still so vigilant almost two decades later?
“Because modern society has almost completely eliminated trauma and violence from everyday life, anyone who does suffer those things is deemed to be extraordinarily unfortunate. This gives people access to sympathy and resources but also creates an identity of victimhood that can delay recovery.”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
I’ve heard the quote that it’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. There is value to being prepared but there also needs to be self-awareness to know when you’re having a trauma response. For me, I have tried to force myself to take deep breaths when something startles me and really take in my surroundings. I ask myself “is it realistic to feel this way right now?” and then react appropriately. I feel like I reacted appropriately when it appeared my house and or truck was being broken into. The dog knew something was off and alerted me accordingly. I trusted his wisdom and reacted in kind. Trust but verify.
The next morning as I wiped the three hours of sleep out of my eyes, I rechecked my cameras. That’s when I saw it. The previous night, a few hours prior to the dog’s verbal alarm, I had been out late with a buddy looking for snakes. When we pulled into my driveway sometime after 10:30pm that night I saw my right-hand rise to the interior light on the security camera app. I don’t remember turning it on, and have no idea why I did, but there was the photographic evidence. Although I’m not sure why the dog went nuts, the part that sent me over the irrational edge was seeing that light in my truck. I was the one responsible for leaving the light on. My complacency and lack of situational awareness was what set this whole ordeal in motion after the dog’s outburst. Ugh. I am my own worst enemy sometimes.
I remember feeling a little irritated that my wife was able to go back to sleep so easily. On the one hand I envy that kind of peace of mind to know someone else will handle a situation, and the forethought to know that likely nothing is even wrong. I couldn’t help feeling a little mad at how alone that made me feel. Sometimes I believe that what veterans like myself really miss more than anything is being a part of a group that truly had your back. There’s a power to being in a platoon or on a team where you are all working in unison for a common goal. Sebastian Junger says in his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
“A modern soldier returning from combat---or a survivor of Sarajevo---goes from the kind of close-knit group that humans evolved for, back into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families ae isolated from wider communities, and personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good. Even if he or she is part of a family, that is not the same as belonging to a group that shares resources and experiences almost everything collectively. Whatever the technological advances of modern society---and they're nearly miraculous---the individualized lifestyles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit.”
Having a group to belong to with a collective mission was good for my soul. In many ways it’s what we were designed to do as humans. Although we are more connected than any time in Earth’s history by way of social media and the internet, we are equally more isolated. I spend most of my days working behind a computer from my home office and only see another human being when my wife comes home in the evenings. The loneliness that our modern world has created by digitizing our lives has a way to isolate us, and exacerbate perceived dangers. If your only lifeline to the outside world is by way of your social media newsfeed, then likely you are being fed a toxic mix of tragedy and violence because as the old adage goes “if it bleeds it leads.” I imagine that’s why the last three years post pandemic have been so weird. As more people isolated and became fearful of unseen threats, it created a cycle of fear and mistrust and pushed us further away from our tribal roots.
As I’ve said before, I don’t have any concrete answers but whether it’s emotionally, physically, or spiritually, our answers lie in community. IF there are real dangers, having a community you can rely on will help tremendously. If you’re getting ramped up from issues involving PTSD or other mental health issues, having a community will help to center you. Whether it’s a friend or a counselor, sometimes just talking to someone helps. When I feel myself getting wound up and gritting my teeth at all the horrors of the world, I unplug and find my way into nature. There’s something soothing about just sitting by a river or taking a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. For me personally, the added bonus of a “mission” to find and photograph target species of wildlife helps to give me purpose when I’m lacking it. That may not work for you, but take stock in those things that give you life and remember them for when times get tough. Remember to stay alert, stay alive, and most importantly take care of your mental health.
Check out “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging” by Sebastian Junger for further reading on the dynamics of being a part of something bigger than yourself.
You are so gifted and your writing so penetrating.
Love that second Junger quote. Excellent work, bud.