Bat Attack

Last Friday, I heard a sound that I dread: bats. Sure enough, as I crept into the attic, smelling a smell that I have come to know as bat, cautiously surveying my surroundings, I found a group of bats roosted behind the screen in the gable. I yelled and ran out of the attic.

Back up a few years…

One morning, I happily but sleepily went downstairs to say good morning to my mom. My dad wasn’t home. As I got to the bottom of the stairs, something came flying at my head. I screamed, startled mom, and ran out the door, leaving my mom all alone with what I knew to be either a bird or bat. It scared me so badly that I couldn’t do anything but stand on the porch and hold the door open—and shake and sob. I refused to go back into the house for at least thirty minutes, and even then, I was scared.

Long story short, the BAT, after flying at my head, had hidden itself downstairs for a few hours and then appeared to my mom and dad who got rid of it. I was asleep upstairs. I was so traumatized that I had had to put myself back to bed…but not without hesitation of coming upstairs and having something fly at my head. That hesitation lasted for months.

Around that same time, I heard some squeaks from the attic and heard something hitting the door ever so often. I told my dad of the noises, and his solution was to head into the attic with no protection to see what was in there. You know what it was: a bat. He figured that if the bat could get in to the attic, then the bat could get out…but it didn’t. It and its family perished in the attic that summer. I found their dead little bat carcasses sometime later…

This was a few years ago. We forgot to get someone to come to the house to seal any cracks that would let bats in. No one but me really even thought about it until last week. And then…

All of the trauma of a few summers ago returned. I have dreamed about bats three times in less than a week. They have attacked my head and grown to the size of monkeys. I have been hesitant to go downstairs, come upstairs, or round any corners in the house. My conversations have centered around bats and my friends have felt so badly for me that one sent bat repellent and two more came to the house to see what they could do. I’ve even contacted a bat removal company, but they can’t do anything until August because bats are a protected species.

I know that bats are good to have around. I know that they are basically harmless and that they eat lots of bugs and mosquitoes. I know that they don’t intentionally attack humans. I know that they are even sort of cute.

But, folks: The part of my brain that knows all of those things has been disconnected from the part of my brain that says that I either need to “fight, flight, or freeze.” That’s what happens when trauma is triggered: We fight; we run (flight); or we freeze.

Friends: If I have completely shut down and witnessed the activation of the trauma brain over my minute experiences with bats, can you imagine how much more so the trauma of systematic racism has influenced people’s lives? Can you imagine how living every day feeling judged has affected people’s dreams? Can you imagine living every day—not just bat season—looking over your shoulder, wondering if someone or something is going to attack?...

Thankfully, the bats in my attic have moved on for now. Maybe they sensed they weren’t welcome? Hopefully, my traumatized brain will return to its fully integrated self soon and I can stop living in fear.

Oh! that it were that simple for my friends of color. Oh! that years of oppression could just fly away.

Friends: We have work to do.

God. Help us. Amen.