What Was the Trigger to My Tears?

    For weeks now I've been coming home from a happy day at work with all my rambunctious teenage men and women learning, having fun, confiding in me, and asking me questions about my life. But, once I walk through the doors of my beautifully renovated home, my mood turns to dread and sadness.  Tears start running down my cheeks, and I wonder how am I going to carry on this summer with no students, if I'm only happy when I'm teaching?   Why is it that I cannot stand to be alone now---after living alone with no problem in Tahoe for 5 months with only occasional visits from my fiance?

    With everything G_d weaves our divine providence into a chess game which unfolds suddenly when it is our time to remember and realize.  Last week was the start of the end of this game.  A teacher brought up the Rolling Stones magazine article that was fabricated about rape on college campuses.  It was the first time that I'd heard of it.  I blurted, "Why did they have to fabricate that story when there are so many real cases?"  The teacher prodded me until I explained that I was raped in college and not by some stranger, but by my best male friend from my mechanical engineering classes.

    When I returned home that day I sobbed more than usual.  I'd seen on the TV college panels pledging to do better for rape victims in college and maintain their dignity.  That was such an amazingly progressive step versus my day and age in the 1980's when women's sexual escapades were made public in court and in front of their families in order to prove that the woman was a slut and was asking for it.  We didn't report the rapes, because reporting it victimized us even more.

    Today a student asked me if I ever wanted to kill someone.  I quickly replied, "Yes, my best male friend in college for stocking me for four years."  They inferred what happened after the stocking was finished.  

    Again I returned home and sobbed, but what made my sobbing worse was that my daughter who's a nurse had texted me telling me that my crying when I was alone was not post traumatic stress from my fiance breaking up with me so cruelly in a text while I was sleeping the night before I met with lawyers to save my teaching career, I was just suffering from depression.  She asked, "If it was post traumatic stress, what was the trigger?  I hadn't been shot at like she had been."  

    Actually, I have been in a school shooting, but I let that go, since it was a small thing in my life.  After some thought I realized G_d's unfolding story line.  When I was near my daughter's age, I had begged my parents to let me live alone in a studio at UC Berkeley during my senior year of college.  My parents were very against it, but I really wanted to be away from my sorority.  They had started to officially tell me who my friends could be and no one can do that.  Little did I know that my best male friend had been stocking me for four years and was waiting for an opportunity to be alone with me without room mates.  

     One night, burned painfully into my memory, I let my best male friend into my studio and knew something was horribly wrong once I shut the door.  All my senses told me of his intent. He acted like a cat with a trapped mouse.  The phone rang and my synchronized swimming team member's voice was on the line.  I wanted to scream to her, "Please call the police!  Help me!"  but my best male friend hadn't made any moves yet, so how could I tell my team mate what was going to happen.      

    After I hung up I opened my drawer of silverware and looked at my knives.  A big knife was close to me and I wanted to grab it and kill him before he raped me, but G_d gave me a deafening understanding, "Thou shall not kill."  So I closed the drawer and walked into the other room and what was to happen happened. He said afterwards, "I couldn't imagine life 20 years from now knowing that I hadn't made love to you."

     I didn't tell anyone for years, especially my parents.  They would have made me move back into the sorority.  I did go to counseling when the flashbacks came a year later.  For ten years after college I was always fearful that he'd find me again.  I changed my name when I married just to make it difficult for him to track me, I moved far away from Berkeley, I never lived alone, and I moved often.

    Now my nest is empty, my kids are gone, my name is changed back to my maiden name, and I live utterly alone once again in my hometown, easy to find.  My fiance is long gone and with someone else.  Now I know the source of my tears when I enter my home alone.  It's all connected to that time 31 years ago.  The only other time that I was utterly alone.  However, now I have humane weapons stashed everywhere that don't kill, but allow me to leave safely---just as I have for 31 years.  Now I also know G_d very well and His angels surround me and protect me.


P.S.  To my blog readers:  If you want to support a struggling math/engineering teacher and author, please buy my first book, "The Romance of Kilimanjaro," soon to be followed by my second book at:  https://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/book.php?w=9781613464960         Thank You!