Taking My Life Back Page 8

  It worked. With those six broken bones in my back, I had to move slow and wear a brace around my neck for a few weeks, but it’s hard to look back on that relatively easy recovery and complain, now that I have a visceral understanding of how lethal a collision like that can be.

  I rededicated my life to Christ, not because my devotion had been insincere but because I realized I was being willful and trying to fix everything myself. And just making a prayerful proclamation wasn’t going to do it. I needed to trust God enough to release that constantly coiled spring. For the next two years, I was able to take care of my little boy and myself and also make regular time to be still inside and know the Lord. As a result, a far deeper sense of personal quiet came into my life. It added to my relationship with Noah as well.

  By the time I was twenty-four, my parents had moved to Texas. The first time I went for a visit I loved it there (in spite of the humidity). So just as a lark, I put in a job application at a corporate housing firm there. I had come to feel too emotionally involved with the patients in dialysis, and so I had found work in the sales and marketing field instead. The company in Texas offered me the job, and the timing was good. Noah and I soon moved.

  Life in Texas immediately felt right, and I was in good emotional shape. However, I was about to get a hard lesson in situational awareness. One evening shortly after arriving, I was out driving with Noah and we stopped at a market for a few necessities. Being new to the area, I didn’t realize the neighborhood was sketchy and not the best place for a woman alone with a child to be. We did our shopping and walked back out to the car. By now it was well after dark, and the semilighted parking lot didn’t offer much security.

  My little boy was still in the seat of the grocery cart as I bent to the trunk to load some of the bags. Just as I bent over, I felt the tip of a gun barrel jam into my back.

  This was a first. A powerful primal instinct left me no doubt as to what it was, but it had nothing to offer me after that, since the fight-or-flight mode was no good. I couldn’t fight an armed man, and with Noah there I couldn’t run.

  I slowly turned to face a solitary male about my own age, ordinary looking except for his level of desperation. He was either a drug addict in need of a fix or the most nervous man I’d ever come across. Somehow, his fidgety loitering had gone unnoticed by everyone in the area until now. And now it was noticed only by me and Noah. Nobody else was around. Whatever happened next, there would be no cavalry in time to help us.

  He demanded money. The gun was persuasive.

  He must have been lying in wait for the perfect victim and then took advantage of the fact that there weren’t other people in that part of the lot. I’ve never experienced telepathy, but for some reason it was clear that he was doing something he had practiced before and that he expected me to cry out or scream. He really did look poised to shoot me, grab my bag, and run.

  I looked him in the eyes and quietly said, “Here’s my purse. There’s nothing in the car. Please just take what you need without saying anything to my little boy about what’s going on.”

  An instant of confusion flashed across his face before he could conceal it. I imagine he wasn’t prepared for that response. He took the purse from me and pulled out the cash, then tossed it down and hurried away.

  Noah was only four, but very little escaped him. After I retrieved my purse and hurried back to the grocery cart, the first thing he did was ask me why that man took our money. So much for keeping him out of it.

  I just replied that that man really needed money right now and sometimes you have to help people out. He searched my face and seemed to accept the answer, so we got out of there.

  The unfortunate timing of the robbery was that I had cashed my last paycheck from my old job and was carrying three hundred dollars to parse out on expenses until I got my first paycheck from my new job, which was unfortunate because Noah and I had rented a house just shortly before. So while I could report the crime, which I did, and they could apprehend the thief, which they later did, there was nothing to be done for the financial squeeze.

  I can’t explain my calmness that night. My assurance that the Lord was with me allowed me to be calm in that parking lot, and I believe my state infected the perpetrator. Yes, some might say it was blind luck that protected us. God may have had nothing to do with it at all. My experience is simply that the more I make room for God in my life, the “luckier” I get.

  So there we were, four-year-old Noah and I, trying to find our way as a little family. I’m sure every parent who is going it alone knows the desire to find a great partner, unless they just prefer not to get into a relationship at all. I wanted Noah to have a complete family. I had seen my grandparents happily in love for over fifty years. I knew that type of happiness existed. I just hadn’t found it yet. But no amount of emotional need ever seemed to be enough to persuade me to fully trust any of the young men I happened to date. It really wasn’t them; it was me. I always ended up running away the moment anything got serious.

  I kept telling myself that Noah and I could get through life just fine. But I hated to think of what that would actually mean.

  The only cure I know for excessive anxiety over the future is a conscious decision to believe that God has a bigger plan for my life. I hope it goes without saying that this is far easier to talk about doing than to live out from one day to the next.

  Staying spiritually centered became a full-time job in the months that followed. But I stayed with it, and it paid back in the form of a healthier outlook, plus a more peaceful and accepting state of mind. I knew how hard it was to be a single mom. But I could see a future for us now.

  By now you already know that I’m not going to claim the Lord prepared me for the Boston Marathon bombing and everything that followed by steering me into my prior experiences working in the medical field and enduring countless hospital visits. I also won’t argue with those who call it a happy coincidence. But I tell you, when it came to swallowing my panic in that Boston hospital, my knowledge of the medical field played a big part in quelling my anxiety. I felt familiar with a lot of what went on around me. The surgical setting and the rash of operations were a bit less intimidating too when I could visualize what was going on with what was left of me. I also found that I never felt like complaining about the number of needles that pierced my skin daily, considering the huge needles I had been required to put into the arms of my dialysis patients.

  −10−

  Silent Explosion

  Oddly enough, it was only after the chaos of the terror attacks and the intensity of life in the hospital had subsided that the darkest shadow fell over me. This obstacle, by its nature, was concealed.

  Beyond the effects of my physical injuries, I had a long uphill slog with PTSD. I had been counseled about its potential effects, but I was still caught off guard when it metastasized into my everyday thinking, long after the ride home from the hospital. It’s only after having felt the strength, subtlety, and perseverance of PTSD that I came to a real understanding of what it is and why it can be so devastating to the lives of survivors. It has no respect for strength or for weakness, for age or for gender.

  I began avoiding risk and seeking safety in countless little ways. I didn’t connect the dots. And I never gave any thought to the idea of PTSD having a negative effect on my spiritual life. But it did, and for a while it darkened my outlook of a bigger plan.

  During my alone times, when the house got quiet, a pallor of fear descended over me and ruined my attempts to visualize any sort of workable future for us. Noah seemed to have an innate understanding of the situation, whether just from his compassionate nature or our shared experience with this thing, and his patience with my limitations was endless.

  Since I was of no use in getting him outside to break up the scenery, I encouraged him to go out for small excursions with other family members. At home, he would sit with me while we planned activities for when I could finally move around again. We both needed
those planning sessions. No matter how bad the PTSD got or how intense my anxiety attacks proved to be, I was so thankful there was never a break in my connection with my little boy.

  My dependency during that early recovery was the hardest part for me, beyond all the physical pain. I don’t say that lightly, because pain at that level can drive you to complete distraction and poison everything else. But the slow drip of embarrassment or even humiliation at asking family members for the most basic of assistance tends to wear a person down. Even when you can avoid the immediate panic of finding yourself in a helpless situation, as I did, there is the seeping effect, the grinding down of the ego.

  I did my best to relax into the pull of this giant whirlpool. There was no way to fight the current.

  Here I was at the age of twenty-six, having raised my little boy for the past five years. We had been an independent little family, making our way well enough, until the bombs went off. Now we were back at my parents’ house. Noah was making it his mission to cheer up his invalid mother, and I was pushing my recovery to get myself back to my role as his caretaker, not his handicapped mom.

  Everyone encouraged me to take the recovery slowly and not try to swallow the whole thing at once. I realized it was good advice, but it was hard to put into practice. I want to trust God’s plan for me, even when I can’t see and can’t prove it. The bombs changed none of that. But the trauma set a cancer growing in me. Even though it wouldn’t show up on a hospital scan, it made itself known by its unhealthy symptoms. They were subtle at first, casting shadows that slowly deepened. I started making choices about my future that I would have hesitated to make from a more centered state of mind.

  I have no other explanation for the return of the Obedient Preacher’s Daughter. I had thought she had been laid out on a slab for good. It was as if some bone-deep level of fear got blasted into me along with the shrapnel and revived the insecurities that had created that side of my personality.

  And, of course, the OPD syndrome was only part of it. I was about to begin learning the recovery dance. Lots of injured people know it. It starts with the familiar old three steps forward, two steps back. But you quickly learn to be thankful when it’s only two steps back and not ten.

  For several months before the Boston Marathon, I had been in a long-distance relationship with my boyfriend, traveling between Houston, Texas, and Rochester, New York. We had been at the marathon with a bunch of his relatives and he was also impacted by the blast, but with far less severe injuries. While I was still in the hospital, there had been some press interest in us as a couple, and six months after the bombing took place, he traveled to Houston and surprised me by proposing marriage. The media caught wind of it, and everything took off from there.

  I don’t know why he did that, and I don’t know why I accepted, especially with my history of running away from anything serious. We hardly knew each other, and while I thought we were compatible in terms of our faith and our spiritual lives, there were way too many unanswered questions about issues that mattered.

  Maybe we both thought it was meant to be, not so much because of our personal chemistry but because we had survived. Gratitude is a powerful emotion. The truth is that we didn’t have what it takes to be married. But unfortunately, as soon as the first inklings of our engagement broke on social media, interest in our story spiked, and suddenly the wave of attention was a flash flood.

  My mother made it clear she wasn’t happy with the way things were developing, but she respected my independence. I’d like to think I would have come to my senses on my own if things had slowed down a little, but instead, a major bridal website called and offered a huge fantasy wedding in return for the photo and publicity rights to the whole event.

  Because I was new to the public eye, it seemed as if this was all some sort of fantasy and not the valuable media event that it actually was. Six months after we became engaged, we were married. The location was the Biltmore Estates in Asheville, North Carolina. The place is spectacular and has a compelling romantic aura. My fiancé seemed to warm right up to the attention, and although I had a hard time smiling for the camera between my leg pain and my self-consciousness, I did as expected. My OPD syndrome was flying on this.

  The wedding was gorgeous, everything they had promised. I was up on a temporary prosthetic for the first time, a leg crutch that enabled me to walk on my knee and take the pressure off my lower left leg, walking between giant floral arches on a carpet of flower petals. It was an overwhelming scene, fit for minor royalty. Everything looked the way it was supposed to look, a fairy-tale wedding for two miracle survivors.

  What actually happened was that another bomb went off, but this one was the kind that makes no noise. Instead, it silently blows everything to pieces in slow motion.

  As events built up to the ceremony, I considered the knot in my stomach to be a sign of nerves. I had never been a public person, and the intensity of the setting was enough to drop your jaw in itself. But now I look back in hindsight and see the warning signs flashing away. Isn’t it strange how our minds can edit out so much of whatever stands right before us?

  My new husband had a lot of friends.

  At the wedding rehearsal dinner the night before, one of them ran up to him and leaped onto him, with her arms thrown around his neck and her legs wrapped tight around his thighs. She just hung there, like her tiny dress was made of Velcro.

  There are those moments in all of our lives when we glimpse a single image that tells us a whole fistful of stories. This was one. But I was busy telling myself that the feeling of wrong wrong wrong in my stomach was nerves. It might have been nerves. Maybe it was just nerves.

  After all, as I repeated to myself, we both came from strong Christian homes. We shared so many values. It seemed to me that the thing to do was focus my optimism and positive energy on making this marriage work. I had brought this man into my son’s life, and there was no way to pretend that this was a decision that affected only me.

  −11−

  The Many-Headed Media

  Not long after I got home from the hospital, I came out of the media cocoon that had protected me up to that point. It was a rude awakening. Internet haters and paranoiacs had begun to circulate rumors that the bombing had been a hoax. Surprise, it was all fake. All those victims were either lying or else they never existed.

  The race officials were lying, the bystanders and witnesses were lying, the press was lying, the police were lying, and the entire staff of every hospital in Boston was up to their necks in the deception. They had to be; there is no other way to pull off a hoax of this proportion.

  I have to step back from the personal anger and indignation I feel when I think of this so I can calmly ask how even the most bitter internet troll could believe that this whole thing could be successfully done in an age when our own government and our biggest corporations can’t keep secrets to save their lives. But somehow or other, the haters managed to believe it had all been hushed up when it came to the Boston Marathon bombing.

  Somebody reproduced a reversed photo of me to prove that my injuries were a hoax. “See? Her injury changed legs!” They did this as if nobody has ever noticed what happens when you digitally flip a photograph. Whatever drove their great need to expose this “hoax,” they had no time to consider the obvious. On the internet, we can all post things and forget that there is an actual human being on the receiving end.

  The nicest thing I was called was an “actress,” but some went on to claim that my hunger for fame was so intense that I blew my own leg off to get attention and win acting jobs.

  I don’t consider myself a naïve person just because I do my best to remain civil with other people, but this was the first time I personally encountered strangers who chose to speak the most vile things their imaginations could conjure—always expressed through the safety of an internet connection, of course. While I suspect there are legitimate issues of mental illness and borderline personalities here, the whole pictu
re comports with my idea of the kind of behavior that any of us is capable of sliding into if we come under the wrong influences and are without an internal compass.

  Having stood on the receiving end of that form of public mania, I came to believe that the articles had the effect of engaging cogs and wheels in the minds of certain people and setting them spinning. With these people, I believe that kinks in their worldview just happened to fit the details of my story, thus turning the lock on the lid to Pandora’s box and releasing a swirl of angry bats. These are unedited samples from Facebook and other social media:

  You are such a lying, treasonous pig! You stole and lied to the good people of America. You need to be in prison with the rest of your crisis acting friends. One day, you will have to answer to God. You better live it up while you can because he is a just God. I feel sorry for that little boy. I can’t imagine having a mother that lies and steals from her neighbors and betrays her country. You are such a pathetic human. It must be sad to look in the mirror. May God have mercy on you.

  You are going to rot in hell for your lies. Enjoy your millions of dollars while you can. You won’t be able to take that with you when you face Satan for eternity.

  It’s obvious that your leg is there and you are just good at photo shop. Why don’t you quit hiding it behind your computer and come out and tell the world you’re nothing but a stupid blonde fake.

  Every day I am spending the time it takes to expose you and the other “survivors” for the liars that you are. One day you will pay for this and I hope to be in the front row when it happens.

  I bet you were really pretty before you injured yourself and almost took your own life to get attention.

  Whore.