Day 11: Blur
It was pitch black and we were still a couple hours outside of Portland.
We’d been driving all day. Me, my younger brother, and my parents. Driving up from California to visit an uncle in Oregon.
I don’t remember the buildup. Things must’ve been tense. We might’ve been arguing. Maybe my parents weren’t getting along.
But we were hungry. And either we stopped for food now or we might not eat until midnight.
My dad took the turnoff to Crater Lake — an old volcano now holding an inky blue lake, with an island in the middle. It’s popular with tourists. There was bound to be food.
We parked in the big lot at the top of the winding road. It was summer. But it was cold up there. And wet. We shivered as we walked to the restaurant.
Inside there were several roaring fireplaces. Fancy chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Moose, bears and foxes stuck their glassy-eyed heads from the walls.
There was elk on the menu. And it was expensive.
Now, this is not a horror story. But sitting there in that restaurant, I was scared.
It wasn’t the darkness or the creepy decor. It was the prices.
Five years earlier, at 17 years old, I had applied to college. And in my application essay I wrote about feeling guilty. I felt sorry that it had cost my parents so much to send me to school. And that even before my four years of college, I felt I’d been a burden.
So as we sat at the table looking over the menu, I started crying. And then crying I got up from the table, walked outside, and sat in the parking lot alone. My appetite was gone.
It scared me to death that we were going to pay to eat dinner there. I was afraid that we were going to go broke. I had a nervous breakdown. And I literally would have felt more comfortable not eating than spending $25 or $30 on an entrée.
Now, you might see a baby start crying at dinner and think “that’s totally normal.”
But a 21-year-old? That’s not a normal reaction.
Back then I barely knew what the word “trauma” meant. And I sure as hell never would’ve thought it could apply to me.
But that’s exactly what that was: trauma.
Sitting in that restaurant, looking at that menu, facing the prospect of spending that much on dinner, and feeling as I did about money — it was way more than I could handle.
To me it felt like something very, very bad I was going to happen. That we were deeply unsafe and we were about to go over the edge. We were teetering on the brink, and I could’t save us.
You could say I was being “too sensitive.” That everything was fine. I was safe. Nothing was going to happen.
But crying doesn’t happen without reason. Fear isn’t arbitrary. Nor is anger or shame or guilt. Or joy for that matter.
Looking back, I think my tears were a reflection of what my parents were feeling. Maybe there was something going on with mom and dad that they weren’t showing.
They wouldn’t express it, they wouldn’t acknowledge it, so I had to do it for them.
I was the dam that had to break. I was the weakest link. I was sensitive to how they felt, and I became the container for all they didn’t want to address.
But my container was too small. And in that moment I overflowed.
Sensitivity isn’t always a gift. And maybe most of the time it isn’t.
Because sometimes you feel way too much — feelings that aren’t even yours to feel.
And when that happens, the lines between you and other people begin to blur. And you start to wonder, “What’s actually me?”