This feeling is something that has been written into my bones. I don’t want it. I want to give this away, but I am stuck with it. It was the way the floor vibrated in my living room when a stranger decided to bang on the front door to our apartment building.
What that person doesn’t know is that I’m the only one at this end of the building. I wasn’t expecting anyone. What this person also didn’t know about is my complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). I let the person bang for awhile. It’s not my problem.
I don’t open doors for strangers. I’m an abuse survivor who was also raped earlier this year by my roommate — and I’m journalist — so I know too many stories about how opening the door ends badly for someone. I can write this headline before it happens. I do it all the time.
The trauma started to seep up from the places in my body I thought I hid it. Apparently, I didn’t pour enough concrete in the buckets where the pain is buried. I thought I replaced my blood with concrete. It’s horrible sometimes to figure out there’s still blood in your veins.
In “The Gift of Fear,” Gavin DeBecker told a story about a woman who let a man into the door of her apartment building and that man ended up raping her and almost leaving her for dead. I read that right after I left my abusive husband for the first time in 2012. It’s now 7 years later. Yes, I had to leave him several times before I got away.
I left my ex-husband for the last time just days after Airealle Sells was attacked by the father of one of her two children. I filed for a protective order against my abuser 24 hours before she did. She’s dead. I’m not. She opened the door. She was not naive, and she fought for her life. I don’t think I had it in me in 2016 to fight like she did. She knew what was on the other side of that door and he said something to get her to let her guard down for a moment. I’ve read all the court paperwork on her case, because that is what I got paid to do at the time.
There are so many ways this could end badly. I do not want to open the door for this moron who keeps banging. I’m looking at my feet, thinking, there is no reason you have to hit the door so hard that it makes the concrete under my socks vibrate.
What C-PTSD does in situations like this is trigger a “flashback” of all the trauma. All of it comes back as if it’s happening to me in this moment. Oh, no. It’s all going to come back. I can’t deal with it all. No one can deal with all of this if it comes out.
I waited longer. Rebecca, just let this person bang. This is not your problem. I understand your floor is vibrating, but you can’t get involved it whatever is outside your front door.
Here we go, let’s flashback to more crap. It was 2018 — the doors slamming between 2:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M. on a day when I had to be at work at 6:00 A.M. with my six-year-old daughter in tow. I tried to keep us asleep on a Saturday morning, knowing I had to work eight hours that day.
I was terrified to intervene. I had just spent a lot of time reporting on a story in which an off-duty police officer was killed, because he helped a neighbor in a domestic dispute. I’ve reported on so many stories where people end up dead because they got in the middle of someone else’s problem.
I called police on that day with the “slamming of the doors” — which I do not do on default, because of all the negative interactions I’ve had with them. The decision to ask police to help me was a hard and deep one. They came. They were useless, because no one answered the door in the unit where they were slamming doors.
The banging on this door in front of my apartment has now gone on so long, it became the “slamming of those doors” all over again. That trauma came back. My need for sleep. My fear for the safety of my daughter and myself. The uselessness of calling police.
The trauma was right there with me again. In the present, flooding my chest. That puts me into fight-or-flight mode. It’s a place I live easily. Fight-or-flight is becoming a death sentence for me. Someone change the channel.
And now we flashback again. “Flower Guy” is what an AirBnB roommate and I called this guy. He screamed at us to let us into a building, because he wanted to make up with his girlfriend. My roommate decided to let him in. We should have called the cops instead. That girl re-broke up with him the next day. He killed himself 30 days later.
More banging in the present. More vibrating under my feet.
Then there is the memory of the roommate who raped me earlier this year. I forgot. I was so thankful there were moments I could forget this. I was thankful for being sometimes allowed to forget. The continued pounding on the door after more than 60 seconds brought the rape back to the surface. I didn’t get to tell my story in court, so it was now sitting on my chest as someone bangs on the front door of a 40-unit apartment complex.
I gave someone 90 seconds to bang on the door and my floor was still vibrating. Whoever that person was looking for was apparently not coming.
The roommate who raped me knocked on my door. “I’m busy, what do you need?” I said the night he attacked me. I was unpacking and putting my clothes away. I just moved in 2 days beforehand.
“Just open the door.”
“I’m busy,” I said again. “What do you need?”
He repeated, “Just open the door.” What happened after that led to me filing for a protective order, a 2nd degree assault charge and federal rape charges.
I don’t open the door anymore.
And this person is still banging. Crap, there’s the memory of my friend’s short-lived boyfriend’s dog and the bruise Coby left on my face two months ago. That friendly dog was just being a dog and had no idea how powerful she was. I wasn’t strong enough to help her not hurt me, and I’m pretty strong. I don’t know what the dog fractured or pinched, but my right cheekbone still tingles two months later.
I break things and I bruise things. I’ve been broken and bruised. I’ve been assaulted, raped, had explosions in my apartment, reported on murders, fires and inaugurations of too many presidents. The person pounding on that front door had no idea that the person right inside the door was this damaged.
So, I do what I do — and I investigate. Why do I keep opening doors I shouldn’t? Maybe it was my dad and he forgot his key. Maybe it was my uncle, his girlfriend, the building owner or one of the property assistants and they just stepped outside for a second. Maybe I should open the door? Am I being safe or rude?
I opened the apartment door to peak and two people were standing outside. I didn’t know who those people were. I closed my door, not wanting to get involved, but realized they saw me and weren’t going to stop banging.
I walked out of my unit. There’s a bit of social responsibility in there — to make sure no one else lets them in. But there’s a lot of “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I need you to stop.”
A small child came charging down the indoor boulevard as I was looking to investigate. “Do you know these people?” I asked her.
“Yeah!” She said.
It turns out a caregiver sent her to grab a food delivery. I don’t have any patience for a food delivery driver who wants to make her problem 80 other people’s problem. That woman was banging so hard on that door, I know a good part of this building was shaking.
That little girl got McDonald’s for dinner. I hope it was good, because she was confident and gorgeous. She deserved a nice dinner.
The food delivery driver didn’t stop there. She decided to lay into this small child. “I’ve been out here for FIVE minutes,” the woman said.
And now I’ve gotten involved. “No, you have not,” I said. With a look of anger, I pointed at my door. “This is my front porch. I heard you pounding on our front door for just over 90 seconds.”
“Well, we were outside in the car across the street — calling,” she said. I do understand that this food delivery driver is stressed, because if that family made a complaint about the food not being hot, they could easily revoke her access to the app.
Let’s call her six-years-old. That little girl was not old enough to place a food delivery order, nor was she the one responsible for answering the cell phone. That woman’s lecture — after pounding so loud she drew out strangers — was ill-placed.
I hope the driver at least made sure that little girl got a toy.
It is three days later and I’m still not over the trauma sitting on my chest. Once a flashback starts — which that lady did not know she triggered in a stranger — it may take me two days more days or weeks to come back to normal.
I think it’s important for us all to remember that we don’t know what the people around us are going through so that we act and react in a way that creates a safe, happy environment for everyone.
