When I was eight or so, soon after the big move from San Diego to Seattle, I told my mother that I felt eyes on me, watching me. It was a creepy feeling; I remember being unnerved by it, which is why I told. I tried to explain, but I've never been very good at making myself understood by voice rather than writing. My mother's response was that I was being ridiculous. Nobody around me - not the other latchkey kids in before-and-after-school care, or the kids in my class, or adults in public - cared enough about me to watch me.
But that wasn't what I meant. I didn't mean that I thought real, corporeal people were watching me. I meant that I felt eyes. Not people, just eyes.
I was afraid for a while. I didn't know what I was feeling, or why, and I gave up on my mother being of any use. On my own, to cope, I invented a fantasy to help me feel better. I started to pretend that the eyes I felt were my parents, my biological family, watching over me. Except, because a) I was young and b) I knew nothing about my biological family, I inserted couples from books, or movies, or TV shows that I was familiar with. Or I pretended the eyes were people from historical dramas - Little House on the Prairie, or Dr. Quinn - getting a peek at modern times. Sometimes I was the daughter of Han Solo and Princess Leia. Other days, frontier folk marveled at automobiles and modern clothing inside my head.
The eyes didn't go away as I got older, but they did change somewhat, and so did the fantasies. I started covering heater vents in the houses we lived in, even though I knew, intellectually, there was nobody there. I got yelled at for it, particularly if I forgot and left a towel covering a vent in the bathroom. My mother screamed that it was a fire hazard, and I suppose she was probably at least somewhat correct. I didn't tell her why I did it. I was old enough, by then, to know that it wasn't normal to feel eyes watching me all the time.
The fantasies didn't go away, either, but they also changed. By high school, I was experiencing what I now understand is pretty classic depression. Particularly after the last move from Oregon to Washington when I was a junior, I was done. With everything. I knew I was gay. I'd rejected Christianity and was toying with the idea of neopaganism, but I didn't really have enough faith even for that. I didn't trust my parents, hated my brother, and had been kept from my extended family due to a feud between my father, his siblings, and his father. I loathed my new school and everything in it. Two of my teachers had taken me aside and told me they had nothing they could teach me. There was only one place in the world I wanted to be, and that was a camp on the Oregon coast where I worked during the summer. I'd given up on trying to make friends years ago, because it took me a year and a half to get comfortable anywhere, and we always moved soon after. It just wasn't worth the effort anymore. I didn't want to be at school. I didn't want to be at home. I hated everything. But I didn't have the outlets for destructive behavior that other kids had - I didn't have friends, didn't drive, didn't have a car. Without those things, I didn't know how to get drugs, obviously wasn't having sex. I didn't have the willpower to become anorexic, or availability of food to get fat. Cutting wasn't a thing yet. But yeah, I was an angry, depressed teen.
I didn't realize it was possible to say no. I didn't realize I actually had a choice about anything in my life, because, while my mother was too busy with my brother to pay attention, I wasn't that sort of kid. I didn't know I could do things on my own, for myself. It never occurred to me that I could stop going to school. It never occurred to me that I had any choice about anything. The fantasies helped me get through, day by day. Like a director determined to make his movie interesting, I made myself get out of bed. I made myself go to school. Not for me, but for the imaginary people in my head who were "watching" me. I tuned out, watching the world around me twice removed, through the lens of the thoughts of these imaginary people in my head. Watching my own life like a movie framed by imaginary narrative made me feel safe in an emotionally unsafe world, and it also interested me just enough to keep me functioning.
I knew it was all imaginary; don't get me wrong. I never heard voices. I never thought I would meet the characters in my head in the real world. But they kept me safe for a long time.
I don't know if I feel the eyes anymore. Maybe I do and I've just lived with the feeling so long that it doesn't prick at me anymore. Maybe the depression has become so strong that the eyes have disappeared, like many other parts of the vivid inner life I used to lead. I'm not terrified of the dark anymore, which I was well into my twenties. I still get vivid nightmares, but I can go back to sleep again afterward. I don't startle out of nowhere and know my parents are dead, like I used to. I'm utterly atheistic, though I used to be both superstitious and somewhat religious.
My brain is a mystery to me. I don't know why I felt disembodied eyes staring at me as a kid, and I don't know if they'll come back. Hell, I don't know if they ever left. All I know is that I learned to lean on them rather than fear them. Whether that's healthy or not, I have no idea.
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