I will never forget the panic and terror that enveloped me as a very small child and followed me through life, derailing and nearly destroying me and others in my life time and after time. I will always remember what frightened me so, and it will always be a part of my neural system.
I could never sleep and so took Valium for 30 years, and when I quit, I could never sleep again and the night terrors reminded me of why I started taking those pills in the first place. It was a Post-Traumatic Stress symptom, a therapist said, the symptom of the traumatized child. She suggested I visualize the fear as a red soccer ball and kick it over the horizon. That didn’t work, so she suggested I give the night horrors a name and so I did, I called the panic Herman, gave it a name, and I began a long series of conversations with him as I woke up, my mind running away with fear.
Six months or so ago, after much therapy, searching, counseling, reading and analysis, a spiritual counselor helped me use meditation to drive the panic away, seemingly for good, and she said I would miss Herman, he had been with me for much of my life, he saw himself as my protector and so, perhaps, did I. A part of me always believed that fear kept me safe from a fearful world. This morning, I woke up early – it was around 4 a.m., still dark – and was reading a novel and Red growled and stirred on the floor and then moved and I felt this presence by the side of the bed. It was Herman, but it was not scary, he always seemed gentle and forlorn to me.
“Herman,” I said, “is that you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I miss you, came by to check on you, see how you are doing. Since you told me there was no more work for you here, I’ve been free-lancing, visiting a bunch of different people, no shortage of clients. But it isn’t the same, I was with you for a long time.”
“A lifetime, almost,” I said.
“Didn’t we have some good times?,” he said, laughing out loud. “The panic attacks, the nightmare, the sweats, wow, you were special! My best work, maybe.”
“I miss you too, sometimes,” I said to him, trying to be kind, although I wasn’t certain that was the truth. People say that fear can keep you safe, alert you to danger, but I think it is just a poison, part of God’s plan to keep us humble and awed, to punish us for being violent and harming Mother Earth. “It sometimes feels that something is missing from my nights,” I said, and that much is true, I thought ,and then I remembered the panic and trembling and tortured nights and remembered to collect myself, to never again fall into the trap of nostalgia, or of thinking I needed Herman or anyone else to save me.
“What do you want?,” I asked. I wanted to get back to my book and, in a few hours, my life. I was very grateful to not be living in fear, it feels strange and wonderful every day, like release from a dark prison.
“Look,” Herman said, “I want to come back. You used to need me, you still do. The world is a dangerous place, there’s money stuff, you haven’t sold Bedlam Farm, you have diabetes, the house needs a lot of work, there are bills to pay. Lot’s to panic about, you have good reason to worry. You’re just not paying attention. Don’t you watch the news, listen to all the struggle stories?”
It was very still in the bedroom, I saw the moon rising over the pasture, Red was sitting up, staring at me, Maria and Lenore were sleeping on the bed, Frieda, ever vigilant, was snoring.
I reached over and put my arm on Herman’s shoulder. “Look,” I said, “that was many lives ago, in the time before love, before peace of mind, before I finally came to understand the truth about you — ”
Herman winced, almost cringed, as if he were expecting a blow. “Which is?”
“You don’t really exist, Herman, you are a figment, a mirage, an empty space, an abandoned lot. You have nothing to do with life, the mist before sunrise. Life happens to me, every day, along with joy and love and meaning, see this wonderful woman sleeping her beside me, she cannot see or hear you, and I do not need you, you did not keep me safe, I never needed you–”
And then, I thought a bat or a giant moth was fluttering across the room, the moonlight came pouring through the window.
But Herman was already gone.