A Sunny South Florida Morning: PTSD Is Real

I remember that it was a sunny, South Florida morning. I was home sick from school. I think I was 13, or was I 14? Anyway, it was just mom and me. I was still in bed but got abruptly woken up because mom was screaming. I ran to the kitchen to find a man in a suit pointing a gun at my mother.

I remember his dark, three-piece suit. I remember his jet-black hair, and that he wore glasses. His face? I couldn’t begin to tell you. When you suffer such a life-altering trauma, some details are forever sketchy.

PTSD is real.

How did he get in the house? Well, my mom told me later that he knocked on the front door and claimed he had left his sunglasses in my father’s office the day before. My dad was an accountant and bookkeeper and he frequently saw clients at his home office, which was on the other end of the house and accessible from outdoors.

My mother asked him to wait outside, she closed and locked the front door, and went to my dad’s office in search of the man’s sunglasses. She found nothing. She relayed the information to him and asked him politely to give her his name and number and she would pass that on to my dad, who had perhaps found his sunglasses and put them away somewhere safe.

The man insisted my mother look again. So, she repeated the process, and again found nothing. Sensing he wasn’t making progress, he asked her for a drink of water. My mother, against her better judgement and just because she wanted to be done with him, let him inside the house. He drew his gun as she was filling the glass.

He didn’t expect to find me home. When I ran to the kitchen he seemed visibly shaken by my presence. In fact, he was anything but calm. I could see his hand tremble as he held the gun. Clearly, this guy was an amateur.

In his desperation to keep us quiet and out of the way, he forced us to lay on the floor between the kitchen wall and the dining room table. My mom burst into nervous fits of screaming. She wouldn’t stop. He panicked and told me, “Shut your mother up or I’m going to kill her!” Those were hard words to hear.

PTSD is real.

I put my hand on my mom’s mouth and begged, “Mom, please shut up!” She kept screaming, but at this point the man seemed resigned to just do what he came to do. He turned toward the bedrooms. My dad, who had little regard for banks, usually kept a good sum of money in a mirrored armoire in my parents’ bedroom. It almost seemed as if the man knew this.

As he began walking, the doorbell rang. You see, while my mom was screaming as we were both laying on the floor, a neighbor’s son two houses down was passing in front of our house on the way to his. He heard my mother. As soon as the boy got home, he told his dad that my mom was screaming. His dad, not tall but rather large, immediately walked over to our house.

The doorbell startled the man. His eyes shifted. His hand trembled again. Yet another unexpected snag. He opened the door and our bold neighbor burst into the house, big belly leading the way. This was too much for the man to handle. He panicked, bolted out the door, into his car, and sped off. The ordeal was over. But the trauma lingers.

PTSD is real.

We don’t know who the man was. We filed a police report, but it was essentially useless. He took nothing. Well, except for my sense of security.

Today, more than 40 years later, I still deal with the post traumatic stress disorder of that fateful, sunny morning when I was home sick from school. I still have a recurring dream: It’s late at night and I’m in my parents’ house alone. The doorbell rings. I look out the peephole and see a hand with a gun pointed right at my eyes. Then I wake up.

To this day, right before I go to bed, I still check all the locks. On a good night, I check them only twice. If I’m especially paranoid, I check them more like five times. Counseling has helped. I can now exercise top-down logic (brain to emotions) and stop myself from verifying my house is locked more than a couple of times.

PTSD is real.

We frequently hear about soldiers who deal with post traumatic stress disorders years after they have fought in combat, sometimes watching friends die. But PTSD isn’t particular to a demographic. We can all struggle with PTSD. All it takes is one life-altering trauma.

I will forever remember that sunny, South Florida morning.