Saturday, May 02, 2009

Nightmares and kitchen doors

I just awoke from a bad dream. I used to have nightmares of monsters and horrible things, but I'm not afraid of them anymore. Since I got serious about self defense and the defense of my family and loved ones, my nightmares are situations in for which I fail to prepare.

In this case, it was an evening like any other, joking with my fiance as we got ready to go somewhere, when there was a knock at our kitchen door (none exists in real life). I walked past the front door, and around the corner into the kitchen. I was just going to take a peek through the peephole, I think we were expecting someone.

I looked through the peephole, and saw blackness, it had been blocked. At that moment, around the corner, the front door opened, and someone entered the short hall after the door.

The front door area was where I kept weapons handy, and it was between the kitchen and bedroom my fiance was getting ready in.

Simple misdirection put me in a place where I wasn't prepared, and my expectations of the situation kept me mentally unprepared.

I could see the shifting bulk of the intruder in the reflection of a glass picture frame on the far wall. I got a debilitatingly powerful pit in my stomach. He had split us up, and I was unarmed. I had failed so completely that the dream ended there. Nothing more needed to be implied. I knew what happened next, and didn't need to be shown. I wasn't afraid of horrible things; just not being able to stop them from happening.

I awoke with the same debilitating pit in my stomach. As I lay awake contemplating the dream, I realized that the AR that rode bedside was in the closet, awaiting reattachment its flashlight, and the XD was just assigned another duty. While I never really sat down and thought; "Going just a few days unprepared should be ok." I know that's exactly what I was thinking. I was unarmed and didn't even realize it. Well, part of me realized it.

In reality, all the ports of entry to our home have reliable firearms nearby. The kitchen door was imagined. My lack of preparedness as I slept was not.

2 comments:

Davidwhitewolf said...

It's all too easy to let this happen. Good for you that your subconscious decided to remind you about what a bad idea it is.

Anonymous said...

You could do like me. Move into a vast forest, build a fortress on the mountain top, one way in, and put infrared monitors on the trial.

Or, you could just get a few more guns and put them in places around the house where you won't ever be more than a couple of seconds from one no matter where you are in the house.