Always Watching

  Do you ever feel like you're being watched? Yeah - me, not so much. In fact it was so rare in my childhood that the only two instances were so creepy that they are forever seared in my memory.

  After school detention for, gasp, socializing, meant I often stayed late to write a hundred times on the blackboard that I will not talk with my neighbors. Backfired on them though - I actually liked writing and spending time with the teacher rather than go home to an empty house. The creepy thing though is someone else noticed me leaving later than all the other kids, walking home by myself.

  I could feel him long before I could see him. So I slowed my pace. And that's when I saw it, his shadow move back deeper into the approaching alley. Fear ran through my body as I crossed over to the other side of the street. Now from a safer distance I dared to look between the old brownstone apartments divided by the alley. He was gone. But he had been there. He definitely had been there.

  It's even worse when the watcher is someone you know. Like your own mother. I was now in 11th grade and a majorette with the East High School, Des Moines, Iowa band. A few twirling lessons back when I was five finally paid off with a spot on the squad. (That and the infinite patience of my new friend that actually propped her stereo speakers in her bedroom windows, facing out, so we could figure out a winning routine - blasting the Beach Boys over and over. Did you know that you can get amazingly good at throwing a baton super-high in the air, then twirl around to catch it when you are practicing outside? Good thing the band room where they held tryouts had two-story ceilings.)

  It was a Friday night football game. The pep squad had decorated our lockers too, just like the football players, which I'm sure they enjoyed decorating more. Mom had drove me there. As I got out I told her to just go ahead and go home. I knew plenty of people I could mooch a ride off of. She pulled out a paper. I pled - seriously - these games are endless. I'll be fine. To no avail. She was not budging. This is stupid I thought as I walked away. I really wished I could have talked her into leaving so I could enjoy myself. I wasn't a baby after all. We were supposed to sit with the band so I took my appointed space and tried to relax. But again I could feel the watching. I squirmed. I looked off into the distance. I couldn't make out which car was ours in the over-packed parking lot. But I could feel it. The hate. Like a hot, searing blast of hate. Directed just at me. It made me miserable. I just wanted to have fun in this one moment of time.

  So I do know what it feels like to be watched. That's why I could recognize it so fast when they started watching me in Sitka. It's not something you see. You feel it first, then sometimes it's confirmed by what you see, like at Sea Mart.

  When you have the kind of childhood I did you end up with defense mechanisms. I didn't even realize I had mine until I stopped to think about it. They had become as much a part of me as my DNA.

 What I do is... Watch. Everything. Everyone. Does. Says. Emotes. Infers. Tones. Moves. Looks.

 Watch. My Environment. Changes. Scenes. Movements. To the point I do it without even thinking. To the point I can read what other people are thinking. To the point it becomes a version of psychic.

  So I could actually feel his presence before he got close to the house. We had just brought Isaac home and spent our days cuddling on the sofa reading, strolling in the Sitka National Forrest Park, and dancing to music played over the tv channels. Our house had a beautiful view of the ocean off to the right, and the whole world could see us thanks to glass spanning the entire front. I loved that place. Light everywhere. But did I see him coming? No. I felt him coming. Long before the SUV passed by, I would look up, no matter what I was doing and see him watching me as he drove past. No matter which way he was coming from. No matter what time of day. Finally he figured out I was always looking back. So he started turning his rearview mirror in towards the cab and looked the other way. But I still knew. He was looking at me in the mirror.

  Always watching my environment, I knew whoever lived in the house on the curve to our left was a shift worker. Only shift workers line their windows with foil. It's the cheapest, easiest way to block out the light so you can sleep during the day. And since there is no industry in Sitka - that meant a cop, firefighter or hospital worker lived there.

  And one day the foil disappeared. A head appeared. Just the head since it was one of those narrow windows high up on a wall, for design effect. Isaac and I had a favorite game we played. I would push his walker to the end of the hall and tell him to wait. I'd rush back to the kitchen and hide around the corner, calling for him to come. Then say 'BOO!' when he reached the corner. Being the smart kiddo he is, it only took once for him to figure this was going to be fantastic fun. And it was. It was hard for me not to laugh before he reached the corner. Each BOO was met with squeals and hands in the air. Even the head in the window was probably laughing.

  Sounds innocent enough right? Just watching right? But it was so much more than that. It didn't stop there. I couldn't hear them, I couldn't see them and I could only assume they entered while Isaac and I were on our daily walk - but I could feel them in the house. In Isaac's bedroom to be exact. The design is what provided the perfect hiding spot. A loft in his bedroom, accessed only by a ladder is where I felt someone. Second-story buildings have always creeped me out, so I had lined the ladder with stuffed animals, to visually take away the effect of having a loft overhead. None of the animals ever seemed to be disturbed. Still. Someone had managed to scale up there. Listening. Watching everything we did. I could feel them.

  You only imagine things like this happening in Russia, China, countries where people aren't free. I was definitely not living in the land of the free anymore. People in those countries know they might be watched at any moment.  I knew for a fact I was always being watched, inside my house, outside my house. No matter what I was doing. I couldn't even have sex with my husband without knowing someone was watching, listening. It creeped me out but I didn't think I could stop them. They seemed determined to do whatever they wanted with my life. I thought about telling my husband since I told him everything. But tell him what? Even I couldn't believe this was happening - even though I knew it to be true for a fact.

  It was the beginning of what I refer to as feeling like a bug under a microscope.  Unfortunately they didn't stop with just looking, always watching. What they did was so much worse. If I could have stopped them Isaac - I would have. Their looking at us, watching us wasn't so innocent. They had decided beforehand our futures. And we didn't have the freedom to stop them.