Night Sweats

Starting in college, I began losing my night vision. I’ve only had one optometrist talk to me about it, and since then I’ve forgotten to mention it to the others. Until lately, there’s been no real harm from it, and the original medical reason for my optometrist to point out my night vision problem seemed like no big deal. But it’s gotten worse. Much worse.

I now hate to drive at night. The lights of the oncoming traffic and the white dashes and the yellow lines and the colored traffic signals—all screaming at my eyes from the darkness—terrify me.

I don’t want to call it a panic attack, because it’s generally not that bad, but it scares me to bits when I have to drive at night. Yet more of Matthew’s long-suffering plight, we usually go out together at night. Who ends up driving every single time? Matthew. He sometimes complains that I never drive, but, really, the inky blackness of the impenetrable night punctured by the blasting headlights of oncoming traffic is just more than I can bear. Dusk is fine. I should probably offer to drive to things more often, then let him drive home, but I never think of that. I open the passenger side door and think of those glaring streetlights, yelling at me, “THIS IS NOT OK, CHRISTINE!”

And it’s gotten worse. The minor inconvenience has become a serious problem. (Obviously, since I’m bitching about it so much.) Moving to St. Augustine was traumatic on so many levels that I’ll never be able to recount the story without extreme hand gestures, eye rolling, head twitches, and vocal mimicry. The worst part? We always drove at night. First we left Chicago significantly later than we meant to. Then, after our stop-over in Louisville, every family member in a 17-mile radius insisted on seeing us, so we left way even later than we intended. Next we were so exhausted from driving all night that we left Atlanta later than we should have. Add to this my driving the compact SUV alone with a trailer too big for our car to be rated to tow it, and my night vision terror increased exponentially. I think I spent the entire drive gripping the steering wheel like only it could save me from death, and I craned my neck and squeezed my shoulders in such a vice-like fashion that I fell to sleep every night exhausted physically and mentally.

The literal pinnacle of the night-terror was Eagle Mountain, I think it’s called. Whatever the name of the mountain pass that goes through Chattanooga, it was nearly my undoing. I think I became slightly unhinged during the episode. Actually, that’s an understatement. I became … I can’t think of the right, terrible word. Something bad. I became something very, very bad.

Going up the mountain, the little car that almost couldn’t strained to pull that over-sized trailer full of scooters, motorcycles, and mattresses up the dramatic incline. But, which lane? The right lane was supposed to be for trucks. Am I a truck if I have a trailer? The left lane was for the hot-shots, and I clearly couldn’t hang with them. The middle lane? Was I a middle lane car with trailer? I just didn’t know. To play it safe, I chose the middle lane. And boy did I ever piss some people off. My snail’s progress got honked at by aggro cars, and I felt always in trouble as I saw someone riding my trailer tail in my side view mirror.

Now for the egress. Coming down the mountain, I felt even less in control. The lights were searing my eyes, there were hardly any lights over the highway, and the blackness of the night swallowed every visual cue I needed to stay on course. And the trailer? Every time I tried to brake, I felt the trailer begin to jack-knife. I crawled as slowly as I could down that mountain pass in the middle lane, praying no harm would befall my little car and the big trailer and my broken eyes. Cars still honked aggressively at me for taking up too much space in the lane they wanted to fly through. To add to the cacophony (and terror) semis started honking at me too! As the giant tractor-trailers sailed by me in the right lane, they honked their displeasure at my minute mountain progress.

There I was, an over-burdened jack-knifing compact SUV huddled in the middle lane like an adolescent boy with terrible acne and head gear, and I was being zipped past by cars on my left and semis on my right. I felt like a lost goldfish in the wrong pond. I felt upside down. I felt blind and groping, thinking now of the Helen Keller joke, “How does she drive? With one hand on the road.”

Clearly, I survived. But Matthew in his over-sized U-Haul he could barely handle it was so huge felt equally traumatized by Eagle Mountain. Maybe more traumatized. I cowered in fear at our next rest break, trying to erase the horror of Chattanooga from my memory, and he railed at how hard he worked to not get killed. Maybe he was a sick carp in the wrong pond if I were a goldfish.

We made it to Atlanta, weary, rattled, shaken, exhausted from sheer force of driving horror, and we collapsed into bed as soon as we could, resting in a dear friend’s spare bedroom. Bless her for her hospitality and amazing pillows after that trauma. I will always remember her green comforter and soft, fuzzy, white towels that soothed with balm our jagged brains. She gave us an island oasis in the river of our travel travail.

We didn’t have any flat tires during the move from Chicago. That’s pretty much the best thing we can say about the move. The memory of the night vision horror lingers with me, though, and I can barely get behind the wheel after 6 pm. If I must, I do, but not without trepidation.