I'm not great at admitting when I'm scared, and I'm not very good at accepting help. But last night around 8 o'clock, I finally broke down and called my parents.
"Mom, can I stay at your house tonight?"
"Sure, sweet. Of course. Anything wrong?"
"Yeah..." [and this is when I start to cry], "I haven't slept in what feels like weeks. I'm scared to sleep in my own house. And I don't know what to do, and I'm so tired."
When I got to her house, I sobbed on her (much lower) shoulder for a full minute before telling her more about it.
"A woman got raped a block away from my house. At 7:45 in the morning. And every time I hear the rats in the attic, I wake up thinking someone's trying to break in."
"I would be scared, too," she said.
"I just don't know what to do," I repeated.
"Well," she said, "no point in solving problems when you're tired. Go get some rest."
And I went upstairs and went to sleep. And I when I woke up in the morning, I felt like a new person.
"This is what you're supposed to feel like when you wake up," I thought to myself.
Somehow, in the last month or two, I have formed a strongly negative reaction to sleeping in my own bed.
Sometime in early August, as I was getting used to sleeping at home again by myself, I heard a noise in the middle of the night that sounded like someone was walking up my back steps...steps which lead to my back door...which is also one of the doors to my bedroom...where I was was suddenly awake and very nervous. The sound stopped, and I ended up going back to sleep, but the next night, I heard the sound again, and coupled with something I'd heard about crime in the neighborhood being on the rise, I woke up terrified, adrenaline filling my veins and causing my legs to shake as I approached the back door with caution and flipped the light a few times before settling back into bed, never really falling back asleep.
Since that night, I don't think I've slept more than 3 hours at a time in my own bed.
I figured out a week or so later that a lot of the noises I'd been hearing were actually rats in my attic. Probably all of them. But the damage had been done, and I'd grown to associate my bed with fear.
It's gotten to the point that even with earplugs and a dose of Benadryl, I'm waking up periodically throughout the night to a loud scritch scritch scritch in the walls and in the ceiling.
It's gotten so bad that the minute I lay in my bed, my heart starts pounding, and I have to do breathing exercises just to calm down enough to fall asleep.
I never feel well-rested. My patience is thin. Exercise is the last thing I want to do. The exhaustion shows on my face.
And I'm terrified that the first sick kid that breathes on me will take me out for a week. And I'm even more terrified that this house that I own is the last place I want to be after dark.
I'm trying to get a contractor to come out and install a security bar on my back door, and cover up the big openings that the rats are using to get into the attic, but so far, nobody seems interested in coming out during the only times that I can actually be home: weekdays after 4, and weekends. I would do it myself, but I don't know how.
As I lay in bed Monday night, exhausted and wide awake, I couldn't help but think of all the people in the world also too afraid to fall asleep: in New Orleans and around the world. People that feel exactly this way, or worse--and with better reason. They hear gun shots or bombings every night. Their homes have been broken into before. They've got abusive partners. Their family members have been murdered or kidnapped.
Me, I've got an overactive imagination, a rat problem, and a transitional neighborhood. But for what it's worth, I'm as scared as if it were real. And I'm as tired as if it were real. It's like when I was a kid, and I used to look out the window as I was going to sleep to check for criminals. I know I'm probably safe. I just can't convince my reptilian brain that it's true.
Yesterday, on my way home from work, before the phone call home, I bought a bottle of off-brand ZZZQuil as a last resort. Even in the safety of my parents' home, though, I took a dose. I couldn't chance not sleeping again. And it worked. I passed out before 9 and woke up with the alarm.
I just needed some sleep. God, I needed some sleep.
Today was better. I still haven't found a contractor to fix my problems, and the pest control company still hasn't answered my email about a follow-up. And I really need to call my neighbor to talk about cutting back the banana trees in the back that are attracting all these rats in the first place. But I felt rested for the first time in more than a week. I was patient with my students. The bags under my eyes were only slightly larger than normal. And I've got a safe place to sleep again tonight.
Thank God for parents. Thank God for sleep.
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