Ambulances

One of my first memories is fairly clear, considering my age at the time. I was three and a half years old. I remember the dark carpet of our house, the white trim around the windows. I was standing on the couch, looking out through the large picture window in the living room when the ambulance rolled into our driveway. I watched as the strangers in the ambulance got their bags and rushed into our home. The strangers made their way past me and to my mother. The next thing I remember is my mother being rolled out of our living room on a stretcher, through our front door. I watched through the window as they put my mother into the back of the ambulance. I knew that my mom was really sad. I knew that my mother had taken something that had made her sick. I knew that she might die, although I’m not sure if I knew what that really meant at that point. My grandparents had arrived by this point. The sirens of the ambulance sounded, startling me. I held my ears and cried as the ambulance took my sick mother away. From this point on during my childhood, I would experience an intense fear of ambulances, although I wouldn’t remember specifically why.

I suppose part of processing your past isn’t just getting into what you remember but also figuring out how each experience affected you. For me, this one experience at 3 years of age instilled: a fear of ambulances, the fear of injury to my mother, the fear of abandonment. It generated a general feeling of instability and also introduced a few themes of my childhood – general anxiety, chaos, drama – the feeling of always being on edge. Each experience generates any number of affects. I’m beginning to realize how one can build up a lot of emotion after years of chaotic experiences.