WTF File: The Writing on the Wall

"Thunderstorms don't scare me anymore …Because you do." 

I took this picture years ago, though I can hardly believe I did. Something deep within me, some instinct for self-preservation, must have compelled me to capture this moment. Yet for a decade, I buried the truth it revealed, unable to confront the reality of my own fear.

Our bedroom wall proclaimed "Always kiss me goodnight" in flowing script, a tender reminder of love, and hope, for many tomorrows and many kisses. But hanging from the corner our bed, incongruous and chilling, sat a gun. Its presence defied explanation, no matter how I tried to rationalize it.

I told myself I wasn't supposed to feel afraid. I was married to a man everyone thought was lovable, kind, silly, fun, rational and reasonable.  I thought so too.  How could I fear him? I pushed the terror down, deep into the recesses of my mind. 

I told myself it was irrational, and ridiculous to fear him.   I blamed myself for being damaged and fearful.  I had been a victim of gun violence as a child.  I blamed the perpetrator of my childhood trauma for why I was feeling fear. It must be a leftover from the past, a part of me I don't know how to shake that was showing up just because my husband had a bulletproof vest and a gun hanging off the edge of our bed. I couldn't face what the writing on the wall, and the gun on the bed was saying.

Each night, as I lay beside him, I wrestled with the panic roiling inside me. I didn't want him to see my fear. I was convinced that if he knew he terrified me, it would somehow make it real, and give him a power over me I wasn't willing to concede. And worse, what if acknowledging my fear provoked something even more frightening?

I tried to act normal, I kissed him goodnight, and pretended the gun was as normal as the pillows on our bed. All the while, everything in me screamed that something was terribly wrong, but I silenced it ruthlessly. I betrayed myself and blamed myself for feeling fear.  

I questioned the gun's presence multiple times, his answers made no sense, yet I lacked the framework to understand why. Not only did his explanations make no sense to me, but he didn't seem to have any insight that it might be frightening to have a gun suddenly hanging on the bed.  He didn't show empathy for me or seem to consider that it might frighten me.   In fact, he had a defensiveness that felt like a warning to me to not express anything that contradicted his reasoning. 

I didn't know how to tell anyone what was happening.  I couldn't articulate why I was afraid, not even to myself. Everyone knew he owned guns, and had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and seemed to take the responsibilities of gun ownership seriously.  What if people thought I was making something out of nothing? I feared no one would believe me if I spoke up – after all, I didn't believe myself. 

Looking at this picture now, a decade later, the truth I couldn't face then is stark and undeniable. The fear I felt was justified, a warning sign I should have heeded. But in that moment, trapped between love and terror, I chose willful blindness over confronting a reality too painful to accept.

I didn't know then about his undiagnosed mental illness, about the paranoia that likely fueled his inexplicable behavior. I only knew that the man I loved sometimes became a stranger, and that stranger frightened me to my core.

This image stands as testament to the complexity of fear within relationships, how love can blind us to danger, and how difficult it can be to trust our own instincts when they conflict with the narrative we've built about our lives. It's a reminder that sometimes, the storms we need to weather are the ones raging silently within our own homes, unacknowledged but ever-present.