Perhaps it’s the Halloween season that started me thinking about this thread, but I’m putting it here, rather than in the “Boo!” forum, because I’m not talking about ghosts. I’m talking about thoughts. The thoughts that keep you up in the middle of the night, that suddenly creep up on you in the middle of the day, that you know you will never be totally at peace with. It could be a regret, or a terrible memory of the past. It could be a fear of something happening in the future. It could be simply something you imagined.
I have a few of these. One is a particular section from Gene Weingarten’s Pulitzer Prize-winning article, “Fatal Distraction” about parents who accidentally leave their children in cars, leading to hyperthermia and death. The whole thing is just gut-wrenching to read - and I recommend it, actually - but there is one quote, just a few words, that left me shattered for days. I literally burst into hysterical, panicky tears more than once just remembering it. The quote is from Janette Fennell, who runs a nonprofit organization called Kids and Cars. Kids and Cars lobbies for increased car safety for children, and Fennell has seen all manner of tragedy, including lots of hyperthermia. At one point, Weingarten asks her:
[QUOTE=Gene Weingarten, ‘‘Fatal Distraction’’]
What is the worst case she knows of?
“I don’t really like to . . .” she says.
She looks away. She won’t hold eye contact for this.
“The child pulled all her hair out before she died.”
My son was very young and just barely able to sit up by himself. I was giving him a bath. I left him sitting in the tub with water up to his chest, just long enough to go to the linen closet (which was in the bathroom) for a bath towel. I turned around to realize he was no longer sitting up. I lunged towards the tub only to see him lying on his back, his face under water and his eyes wide open looking up at me. Before I even got a chance to pull him out, my four year old daughter was already scooping him out of the water. The entire incident was no longer than a few seconds but that image of him submerged in the tub looking up at me will haunt me for all of my days.
I am sometimes overwhelmingly anxious about the fact that one day I will stop existing. Everything will go on as usual, but I will no longer be here to experience any of it and I won’t even know. The thought of complete nothingness terrifies me.
The thing I came in here to post is similar - but it never really happened. I had a dream that my daughter drowned in the bathtub - in my dream, I somehow completely forgot about her. And by the time I returned to the bathtub, I found her underwater, curled up in the fetal position, eyes closed, a peaceful smile on her face. It was the peaceful smile that haunts me. I think about that dream ALL the time.
OP: I came to say the exact same thing. That was the child whose Mother was so desperate she left the child in the car while she worked. It completely changed my view of American society.
I’m tough as nails, raised a stoic but that made my eyes water. I’m sure every parent has near misses and scares they don’t share that haunt their sleepless nights. The responsibility of caring for these helpless creatures is monumental. One of mine is falling asleep while nursing in an easy chair in the middle of the night and allowing the weight of my breasts to cover her tiny two week old face. Next day I bought a miserably uncomfortable wooden rocking chair so it never happened again and she’s half grown and awesome despite my learning curve. God they’re fragile and precious.
The other is playing with the hearts of more than one young guy when I was less than twenty-five. I didn’t believe their claims of undying devotion and love and coldly and shamelessly walked away from several relationships I grew bored with. To this day I get the occasional Facebook confession that I ruined a young man’s life and embittered him forever because I didn’t think as much of him as he thought of me. I learned that no one on the planet is as earnest as a teenaged boy and never did figure out how to properly apologize for taking them lightly. I don’t know if it was just me or if young women in general quickly become jaded by the attention created by supply and demand, but I really didn’t believe a word men said to me until I was nearly 30 and didn’t take any of them seriously. I don’t have a high enough opinion of myself to think I ruined any lives, but I’m nearly certain I contributed to some bitterness and mistrust and wish I could relive a few years and undo some damage my callous behavior caused.
I’m not sure what I expected when I clicked on this thread, but it certainly wasn’t horrible stories occurring with kids.
With regard to the OP, there was a NoSleep podcast this season (maybe last) about a father who leaves his kid in the car. I want to say that it was called something like ‘the routine’. Ugh, that gave me nightmares. I’m fairly used to listening to horror stories (ghosts, monsters, etc), but the stuff mentioned in this thread is chilling.
I have something similar to this. I have a daughter, who was about 3 when this occurred. My wife and I were on vacation at a beach. I was in the water and my wife and daughter were up on the sand. My wife later told me that she thought she had made verbal/visual contact with me to indicate that my daughter was going to come in to the water with me. I didn’t get the message and when I saw my daughter she was just about at the surf. I attempted to race back there, but I was moving slower than molasses. She started having trouble - she didn’t know how to swim - and I wasn’t making enough progress towards her. I remember very distinctly being overwhelmed with fear - time slowed down and panic gripped me. It was very fortunate for me that there was a stranger in the water near my daughter who helped her up.
Gawd that sucked. We’ve been taking her to swimming classes ever since. The vision of her going under and bobbing back up is still fresh in my mind, three years later.
I’ve had that recently - but I think it’s because I’ve been listening to Lacuna Coil’s End of Time song a bit lately.
On my honeymoon I went playing in the waves when the red flag was flying. I am a decent swimmer, but not in top athletic shape. No lifeguard and virtually no one on the beach. It was very stupid.
I quickly got tired and tried to go back toward the shore. Even after a lot of effort, I wasn’t making much progress. The waves kept breaking over my head, and I couldn’t get enough air. There is a sort of dread that hits you when you think you really might drown. It feels awful. Especially on your honeymoon.
I did make it in eventually; my wife had to help me up on the beach.
Egad, some of these stories make me happy I don’t have children. My heart couldn’t take it.
I have a pretty good ability to visualize what is presented to me in written form, and one of the most haunting images comes from a surgical report on a middle-aged gentleman who had attempted suicide with a shotgun to the head. Imagining the surgeon attempting to repair the massive and irreversible damage sometimes keeps me up at night.
It’s quite simple in my case. The knowledge that my wife no longer exists occasionally strikes me, usually when I least expect it. It’s one of those things that you come to accept, but only because you don’t really think about it.
You know those old Lovecraft stories where people gaze upon insanity itself, and their minds unwind like a ball of yarn tossed down a flight of stairs?
I have to occasionally view autopsy photos, sometimes of children. They all haunt me, especially one little boy.
I’ve also had some incidents with my kids like others here have experienced.
What haunts me is also the thing I’m most ashamed of.
I was working in a children’s home. I had a new boss, the director was away and so was my best friend, the psychologist. It was chaos, and the new boss was crap. He would not support us, he changed rules, he undermined us in front of the kids, went against the whole educational system. It was exhausting and it was horrible. Then one day I was dealing with a little boy who had been testing me for days. I was going through our system of love, logic and consequences when the shithead boss said: “This time I want you to do it my way”. He wanted me to grab him by the arm, drag him upstairs and show him. Just, I dunno, scare him, show him who’s boss etc. So I did. I dragged him upstairs, shoved him down, shouted. He started to cry and I came to my senses. I apologised to him.
But I know that for that short time, I was just following orders. It was me, just normal me, but I was following orders to do what I know is wrong.
Gah, it still freaks me out thinking about it. I did that. Like in the Milgram experiment and WWII. I know I didn’t do anything awful like that, but I do know that for a minute I was just following orders. Just like people we despise, people who knew right from wrong and did it anyway because they were told to.
Maybe on the outside it seems rather small: I shouted at a kid, big deal. He probably barely remembers (I hope). But I know. It feels like I betrayed myself.
Two things: when the baby was just a few weeks old, we took her to meet her great grandmother, and then went to my mom’s house for lunch. About five minutes after I unloaded kids and settled dogs and herded everyone where they needed to be, my 12-year-old daughter asked me whether I had intended to leave the wee one in the van. I know that it was a cool spring day. I know that someone else would have asked where the baby was. I THINK I’d have figured it out soon. But I still wake up in a panic sometimes…
And my sister committed suicide in 1998. She and I both struggled with clinical depression, and sometimes I think that, if I’d done the deed first, my sister would have survived, if only because she’d have felt like I did - even when I thought I couldn’t manage another day, I couldn’t imagine putting my mom and brother through that again. I don’t know if I’ll ever get past the feeling that the wrong daughter died.
My idiot ex left our 2 year old son in a RUNNING vehicle (giant old model SUV) with the door open while he ran into answer the phone. My son put the truck in gear and ran it backward down a hill TEARING THE DOOR OFF on another nearby vehicle (God, I’m getting chills now thinking of it).
Thank God he stayed put and didn’t get scared and try to get out while it was moving. He’s 22 now. brrrrrrrr!
Ah, Lucunae, I understand. There’s a river of depression running though one side of my family, but several years ago a cousin committed suicide, and I know of at least 2 family members who did not kill themselves (including one who had actually had a gun wrestled away from him) solely because they saw the suffering that suicide caused. In a sense, her act saved other lives.
There is currently a coroner’s inquest going on in Toronto about the death of a six year old boy named Jeffrey Baldwin. The inquest has been going on for weeks in excruciating detail about how his grandparents abused and systematically starved him to death. I find myself thinking of him almost every day, and I tear up every time. He was a happy little boy with a pair of fucked up parents and an evil, monstrous grandmother and a complete utter failure of a child welfare system. It breaks my heart.
It Wasn’t Robert Downey Jr at roulette. It Wasn’t Emma Watson at black-jack. It asn’t Jerry O’Connell, looking very James Bond & walking between tables. It Wasn’t Carrie-Anne Moss watching from the side-lines.
It Wasn’t Denis Leary staring me down. It Wasn’t Kate Beckinsale walking by & throwing a short glance that I can remember to this day. It Wasn’t Katy Perry at that table next to me at luch that day.
It Wasn’t Adel under an umbrella watching me play miniature golf. It Wasn’t Taylor Swift walking with a guy in front of us. It wasn’t Lacy Chabert looking at me in disgust when I was sick from bad shrimp. It Wasn’t
Maya Rudolph on the Boardwalk. It Wasn’t Opey Hughes or Allyson Hannigan or Hayden Panettiere or Woody Harrelson (who seemed like “Woody the Pissed”) at that rock concert.
It wasn’t Ben Affleck at that rest stop. It wasn’t Melissa Gilbert at that other rest stop.
And it damn well wasn’t Sandra Bullock in a full-length body-formed sea-foam green gown walking past me at a Jackson Browne concert.
I don’t know these people. I’ve never met these people. Ever. But there are only so many variations on the human face in this world. That, and when your see something similar, sometimes the mind makes you think you see what is familiar.
If I can be grateful for anything about faces, its that so far no one else has gotten stuck with mine.
