Morning Mourning

Titles are an important piece of every writing project. The title that you choose will affect the way that a reader interprets what you have written. This can be quite drastic depending on how ambiguous your writing comes across. If a word or sentence can be taken multiple ways, the reader may use your title to interpret it. I was thinking about this the other day, so I came up with two poems to demonstrate it.

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Morning

The sun rises slowly,
peeking over the jagged cliffs
that jut off the mountains
it watches over.
The shadows of these cliffs
creep across my floor
until they hit my alarm clock,
and I hit my alarm clock
as it labors tirelessly to awaken me;
I don’t want to get out of bed.
I want to bask in the warmth of the sun
all day long
I want it to warm my soul
just as it warms my oatmeal
that I haven’t eaten, that I haven’t made.
The sunlight floods my room
beckoning me to come out and play.
But it’s still early,
and it’s still cold.

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Mourning

The sun rises slowly,
peeking over the jagged cliffs
that jut off the mountains
it watches over.
The shadows of these cliffs
creep across my floor
until they hit my alarm clock,
and I hit my alarm clock
as it labors tirelessly to awaken me;
I don’t want to get out of bed.
I want to bask in the warmth of the sun
all day long
I want it to warm my soul
just as it warms my oatmeal
that I haven’t eaten, that I haven’t made.
The sunlight floods my room
beckoning me to come out and play.
But it’s still early,
and it’s still cold.

Poem: A Single Rose

A single rose stands tall in the garden
              frosted, pink
fighting against the harshness of winter,
     the tragedy of losing
                  our beloved friend.
Its radiant color shines
  off the distant glacier peaks, broadcasting hope, love,
              comfort,
to a land that is now covered in cold and silence.

2009: The Year in Review

I haven’t done much writing so far this year. But I have been thinking. A lot.

I’ve been pondering my new year’s resolutions from last year, trying to decide if I have done the things I set out to do in 2009. I wanted to do something big, something meaningful. Did I do that? I think the answer is yes, but not in any way I would have imagined. When I stated that goal, I had in the back on my mind a couple specific events I was looking at, stuff I wanted to do that would have been huge. I haven’t done those things yet, mostly because other things took precedence. Like finding a job.

I was out of work from December 2008 through May 2009—almost 6 months of having no steady income. Six months of not really eating a proper meal unless invited to a friend’s house or there was some special even going on at the church. I ate a lot of ramen, maybe muffins if I was able to scrap some cash together. You’d be surprised at how bored you can get with eating ramen, even if you loved it when you were a kid.

I juggled bills, paying my cell phone bill every other month as I was able to come across odd jobs or borrow money from my parents. When that ran out, my phone got shut off until I could come up with money to get it going again. The same thing happened with my car insurance. It was interesting because it was the first time in my life when I was absolutely unable to come up with money for my bills and had no way of knowing how I could get it.

It’s funny how God works though, because 2009 is possibly the best year I’ve had in my life—not in spite of all these things, but because of them.

Have you ever not known where your next meal was going to come from? Have you ever had to eat as much as you could whenever you did get a chance to eat real food because you didn’t know when your next meal might be? Have you ever had to repeatedly quote, “Man does not live on bread alone, but by the word of God” until you really believe it? I’m amazed at what I learned about God and His provisions because of what I was forced to go through. Not having food every days sucks. But it turns out that not having food every day won’t kill you.

Last year I learned a lot about what constitutes actual needs. I came to the conclusion that really all we need physically are the things that keep us alive: food, water, shelter. And even those aren’t necessarily needs all of the time.

If a sheep keeps going astray (so I’m told), a shepherd will break it’s legs. Sounds cruel, but its inability to walk means that the shepherd must carry it around with him wherever they go. While the sheep heals, he is cared for by the shepherd and eventually comes to trust him. After it can walk, the sheep will not stray again because it has formed a bond with its caregiver. Sometimes it’s hard to trust God until you have an absolute need to do so. That’s why I’m thankful for the first half of my year.

Then there was the second half.

Lorne (our sax player at church) works for a property management company, and they were looking for someone to be a resident manager at one of their apartment complexes in Lakewood. At first I wasn’t interested, but as the week went on, I realized that I had been looking for months, and this was my first real job lead, so I went for it. I got the job, and I’ve been doing that since May. I work 20 hours a week, and I get free rent along with a paycheck every month. It’s a pretty sweet deal. My paychecks were big enough to start chipping away at the money I owed to various people (back rent, car insurance, cell phone), but I couldn’t quite get my head above water.

Then I found another job sorting mail on the graveyard shift. This job actually started the week that my mom bought me a couple weeks’ worth of groceries, so suddenly I had this new income that wasn’t immediately needed, and I was finally able to get current on all of my bills. I was even able to save up and spend some $300 on my family for Christmas. It felt great to be able to bless after depending so long on being blessed myself.

At the beginning of the year, I had no money, no job, and bills piled to the ceiling. To end the year, I was current on everything, was able to give back to my family, and I had $400 in the bank. It might not have been what I was thinking when I made my plans for 2009, but as far as my resolution goes, I would say mission accomplished: I had a pretty big year.

“Vegetarians Who Eat Meat”

I just read a Newsweek article that was talking about vegetarians who have come back around and started eating meat—but only grass-fed, sustainably raised meat. I found the final paragraph to be particularly brilliant.

While it’s true that sustainably raised, grass-fed beef may be better for the consumer, it’s hard to argue that it’s ultimately better for the cow. What these steak apologists seem to be missing is that no matter how “lovingly” the cow was raised, no matter how much grazing or rooting he did in his life, he gave up that life to become their dinner. Carnivores who only ate the flesh of animals that had died of natural causes at the end of long, satisfying lives might have a claim to moral superiority, but what to call them? Corpsevores? And if these organic farm animals have such great lives, isn’t the more humane thing to eat a cage-raised, industrially processed chicken? At least we’d be putting it out of its misery.

Through the Wilderness – 7

Chapter Seven

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him.
~ Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10

All throughout my depression, I found myself being less and less sociable. I just didn’t care to be around people anymore, didn’t care to talk to anyone. In fact, I wanted to get away from everyone. It started with my phone. I suddenly hated talking to people on the phone. Other than quick, “I’ll meet you there in five minutes” phone calls, I didn’t want to use it. I wouldn’t answer when people called. I don’t really even know why I kept paying the bill. That attitude spread toward my internet forms of communication—MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger—which I, up to that point, had used quite often.

Now there were only two or three people I would actually talk to online. I didn’t care about the others. I didn’t want to make small talk. I just wanted to talk to the few with whom I could discuss trivial things, things that weren’t real. (“Okay, obviously Jesus could hit a curve ball, but my question is would He? You think He’d take advantage of His abilities like that?” That conversation lasted probably an hour. I am not even making that up.) I wanted to avoid anything that would make me talk about how I was really feeling.

That was a weird attitude to have during that time. All I wanted to do was get to the bottom of my depression, to figure out what was causing it so I could take care of it, but whenever anyone would ask me anything came even remotely close to that topic, I would deflect it another direction. If I was having a bad day, sometimes I desperately wanted someone to come up and ask about how my day was going so I could talk about it and we could work it out together. But then someone would ask me how my day was going, and I would give a cheery but insincere, “I’m doing fantastic! How are you?” I got really good at redirecting my conversations away from the things that hurt to talk about.

I realize now that this was an extremely unhealthy behavior, but I’m afraid it’s one that many people fighting depression go through. (I’m saying this for the benefit of people with depression—that they might decide to talk about it with someone—not for others to convince them to talk if they say they don’t want to; I don’t think that helps anything.) I say this because I know many people—who I know for a fact are fighting depression—walk around every day talking to others as though nothing is wrong. For a long time, I was one of them. I’m sure many of my friends at the college had no idea I was ever facing anything like this. It wasn’t that they were being bad friends; I just got really good at hiding my pain.

But here is the problem with that: We were made to be communicative beings. God created us in His image—right after He spoke everything in to existence. We were made to talk with God and with other human beings. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us if we don’t always want to be hanging out with other people and talk up a storm or whatever. But it does mean that when we never want to talk to other people—especially about things that affect us so deeply, as depression does—we are fighting against our very nature.

One thing that really helped me to get through my depression was talking to someone who truly understood what I was going through. I became friends with someone through somewhat bizarre circumstances, and for some reason we were able to talk about deep matters rather quickly in our friendship. She had a similar history to mine—each of us growing up with a parent who struggled with depression—and so we didn’t have to explain a lot of the background information, as we would have had to do with other friends. She was also struggling with depression at the same time as me.

I don’t remember much of what was said, but I do know that we talked a lot about our depression. And I’ll tell you what—it felt good to be able to just get my frustrations out without having to explain every little detail or make it comprehensible. I noticed that when you talk about depression with people who have been through it, you can say a lot of things that don’t make any sense at all, but both of you know exactly what you’re talking about; you’ve both been there.

It felt good to get all that stuff off my chest, especially with someone who pretty much already knew everything I was going to say anyway. It was helpful not because I was informing her of anything new, but because now I knew I had someone else who wanted to get through it—someone who could help me to work through it, to process all these emotions I had worked so hard to suppress. I found a friend to help me up after my long fall into depression.

Through the Wilderness – 6

Chapter Six

” . . . but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”
~ Proverbs 13: 12

I lay in my bed one day looking up at the ceiling wanting nothing but to be done with this depressed state. I was thinking about how much I yearned to be through it, and I found myself calling out to God. I don’t know remember why I thought of it this way, but I was calling out, “God, please—please—just give me the patience to get through whatever this thing is. I know You can fix it and you will do it in Your own time, but I cannot bear this on my own any longer. Please give me the strength to get through it.” I didn’t feel waves of relief come over me. I didn’t even feel better that night. I was still depressed. But God had answered my prayer. I was going to get through it.

I had turned myself off from my emotions for a long time. I really was numb. And it scared me. I didn’t want to be numb. I desperately didn’t want to be numb. I wanted to feel again. I didn’t worry that when I started to feel I might feel bad. Perhaps I was acting on faith that God would get me through it alright, even though I didn’t see it coming yet. I just knew that I wanted it. I just wanted to feel again. To be “normal.”

There is a movie called “Angus” that was made in the mid ’90s. It has been my favorite movie for a long time, and my sister recorded it off the T.V. for me for Christmas. (She couldn’t find it anywhere on DVD.) I was getting together with some of my friends to go watch it, and I was a little nervous about it. I knew the plot very well, and there is one scene—a sequence of scenes, really—that is pretty sad. I had cried every time I watched the movie, even when I knew it was coming. When I went over to my friend’s house, I was terrified that I was not going to cry during that scene. I was terrified that it was too late for me, that I was already too numb to make it back.

The entire time I was watching the movie, my mind was only on that one scene. Would I do it? What if I didn’t? What would that mean? I was focused. The scene finally came, and it was even too much for my fighting numbness to bear. I sniffled once or twice, and a few tears streamed down my cheek. My favorite tears I have ever shed. I wasn’t thrilled that I was sad. I was thrilled that I could still feel. I’m not completely numb! Those tears brought joy because I realized that I still had a chance to get through it. I rediscovered hope.

Through the Wilderness – 5

Chapter Five

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick . . . “
~ Proverbs 13: 12

These cycles of guilt were a less-than-effective way of figuring out what exactly was happening in my head; the more I felt guilty, the less I cared about finding the solution. For a long time, all I wanted was a reason. I wanted there to be a cause. But there was no cause. At least none that I could ascertain. The more I searched, the less I found, and the less I found, the more I stopped caring. I got tired of not being able to explain any of this to myself. I started to go numb. I was so sick of the negative emotions that my depression caused, I just decided to tune out all of my emotions. If I can’t feel anything, I can’t be sad, right?

This numbness brought with it a growing feeling of apathy about all the things I seemed to care about so much in the beginning: trying to figure out what was wrong, trying to get through it, trying to fix it. I stopped caring altogether. The pain didn’t matter anymore. I simply accepted it as part of who I was, and moved on from there. I went through the motions of life doing just enough to keep me alive and relatively healthy, just enough to keep me from failing school. A meal or two a day if I felt especially hungry. Maybe a homework assignment if I had fallen particularly behind in a class. Maybe a game of racquetball if my roommate could convince me to head to the gym—which wasn’t hard since I was just going through the motions anyway; it really didn’t matter much to me if I went to the gym or not.

I do remember that during these games of racquetball, my competitive side would still manage to reach the surface. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to beat him. It was more I would get severely upset whenever I messed up on things I should have been able to do easily—simple kill shots and the like. I would get extremely frustrated and hit the (borrowed) racket against the wall and shout out my frustrations. It wasn’t necessarily healthy, but it was the only emotion I had really allowed myself to get out in a while, so I guess that it was a little therapeutic.

The problem with trying to become apathetic was that it just wasn’t true. I still cared. I still wanted to be able to get through this episode or whatever it was. I wanted to be healthy again. I didn’t want to be so down all the time for no reason. I wanted it to make sense. So I started hoping that something would go wrong. Perhaps that’s why I liked racquetball so much; when I messed up, it gave me a small reason to be upset. It gave me hope that maybe, underneath all the confusion, there was some logical reason behind everything I was going through.

Through the Wilderness – 4

Chapter Four

“These persistent feelings [of guilt] were compounded by the fact that there seemed to be no apparent reason for my depression. When the reason for depression is well-defined and clearly understood, there is little cause for confusion. But my ‘moments’ would come without any advance warning and oftentimes during periods of great happiness.”
~ Don Baker, Depression

As I’ve mentioned before, I could not figure out the cause of my depression, the reason I was going through all of this, the justification for my pain. It was quite clear that this was not just some emotional response. These feelings—hopelessness, longing, guilt—did not depend on external circumstances. They came and went as they pleased. One minute, I would be happy, laughing at a joke. The next, I would be in my room thinking about how I didn’t deserve any of this. I didn’t deserve to be having a good time; there was too much wrong with me.

Really, that’s what being depressed felt like—that there was something unchangeably wrong with me. Being depressed went completely against all the things I knew about choosing to have a positive attitude and knowing about God’s love—Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, His experiencing my pain in my place. My being depressed seemed a seriously irrational concept. In fact, when I was around other people I knew to be depressed, I would do all I could to suggest to them how they could get through it, reminding them of reasons they had for not being depressed. But it was hard, basically impossible, to think about any reasons why I shouldn’t be depressed.

It’s a vicious cycle, guilt. Especially when it surrounds depression. (And I’ve read that guilt is often a cause of depression.) Guilt, in itself, is not a bad thing. It’s one of God’s ingenious ways of keeping us on the right path, making sure we stay righteous. When do you feel guilty? When you are doing something you perceive as being wrong. When we knowingly break a rule, we feel guilty about it, and we don’t like to feel guilty—it’s not pleasant—so we tend not to break rules. It works to drive us away from sin (which separates us from God). In fact, when looked at this way, guilt (in the sense of conviction) could almost be seen as one of God’s greatest gifts. He designed us to be with Him, so how great is it that we have a built in device that makes us want to avoid things that separate us!

That, I believe, is how guilt (conviction) was designed to work. But in my depression, I found myself feeling guilty for things that were not sinful—things like being happy or having a good time. Underneath the happiness I would experience from time to time, I felt like there was something wrong with me because the laughter didn’t cover up the darkness I was still carrying around. I still couldn’t figure out the cause, but I was convinced that it was something I wasn’t doing right. So I would feel guilty about having joy in my life because I knew I didn’t deserve it.

Then I would start to think about all those same things I had going for me. “Why should I feel this way?” I would ask myself. “I mean, there are starving kids in Africa, right? People in Ghana drink the same water they bathe in. So what was my problem?” I would feel guilty about feeling down when I knew for a fact I still had it better than many people in the world. No matter what I did, I could not escape this self-condemnation. I was always on myself about something. Thus, I was watching myself spin slowly out of control; I knew that the way I was thinking didn’t make any sense. I knew that I should just follow the advice I kept giving other people in the same position. But I still felt trapped, and I still felt powerless to do anything about it. I was losing hope.

Through the Wilderness – 3

Chapter Three

“For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.”
~ King David, Psalm 143: 3-4

The day Bruno died was one of the saddest in my life. I did almost nothing that day but mourn. The reason I feel that this is so important to my story is that it did not trigger depression. I was extremely sad, but even the tears stopped an hour or two after they had begun. By the end of the day, I had gotten a grip on myself and was ready to move on with my life, my dog now a memory instead of a friend. I grieved, got over it, and started moving forward again with my life.

While I was crying, sad about Bruno, I knew the cause of my pain. It made sense that I should feel the way I did. I knew that the emotion, one I had felt before, would shortly pass, after which I would continue to be happy again. In fact, it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant experience, looking back on it. It almost seems pleasing that I cared so much about him that losing him would cause me to react that way. The loss I felt when he was gone reminded me of how good it was when he was still around. Maybe that’s might be why grieving plays such an important role in life; it reminds us that something is worth remembering after it’s gone.

Being depressed is not the same thing as being sad. The first few signs of depression felt like sadness, but they were much more than that. There was no comprehendible reason behind the feelings; they were not tied to a specific event. Rather, it was as though all the reasons for it were tiny and insignificant by themselves, like pieces of straw. But glued together with mud, they became bricks as strong as the pyramids. I could not pin down the source of why I suddenly felt so down, so hopeless. This sadness turned into an intense longing, a desire to figure out what was going on with my head, why I felt this way. But I was searching for an answer that could not be found; the question was unknown.

Imagine that you’re on Final Jeopardy and Alex Trebek reveals that the answer is “blue.” Consider how many questions that could apply to this answer and how little time you have to answer—just thirty seconds—and you’ll begin to understand what it was like to try to solve this covert reason for my depression and what it was like to try to make sense of it. I had a longing—an intense, deep longing—but I had absolutely no idea what would satisfy it or how to make it go away.

* * *

Memories

When I was a freshman in high school, I was hit by a car while riding my newly acquired 10-speed bike towards my house down a blind hill—and toward a car coming up the same hill. I don’t remember anything from a block away, but I saw the pictures of the brown station wagon. It couldn’t have been a pretty thing to watch. I was told later that I did a flip in the air as I sailed over the car. I was amazingly lucky that I was not hurt more seriously. The only injuries I sustained were bruises, cuts, abrasions, and a concussion from when my head, minus a helmet—wear a helmet, kids—hit the windshield. (Then of course there was the major soreness in the weeks to come.) I lay unconscious for a few minutes, having no idea what was going on. But I remember very vividly what it was like as I started to come through:

My vision has not yet returned, but I have already started to feel the pain. My knee is severely bruised, so I do what any 15 year old would do while in pain: try to grab it and curl up into the ever-comforting fetal position. As I attempt to raise my head off the ground, an immense force pushes back at me, mostly from my shoulders. “That’s odd,” I think as I try again to sit up. Then I’m sure; something is holding me down here, and I can’t get up. I begin to panic. I can’t see, and I have no idea what is going on. I can’t figure out why anyone would be pinning me down. Can’t they tell that my knee is hurt? Do they even care that I’m injured? The only thing in the world that I want to do is get up, to get out of such a vulnerable position. But no matter how hard I try, I’m stuck on my back, unable to escape this terror that is starting to wrap its claws around me.

This scene from earlier in my life describes almost exactly how I feel as my depression grows stronger. Only I’m no longer being held to the ground by paramedics who are fearful of internal injuries. Now I’m being pinned down by something different, something invisible.

I sit in my room, attempting to get some homework done, but my mind is on other things. It’s not that I want to think about how I am depressed; it just consumes me. While I try to search for some remedy for my thoughts, I start to recognize that I am stuck in this emotional state. I feel like I’m lost in a labyrinth. Every turn brings me back to the same spot; I can’t make any progress towards the exit. This realization brings with it a feeling of anxiety. It seems like the walls of the labyrinth, though they’ve been there for thousands of years, have suddenly decided that they’re too tired to stand, and they have crumbled on top of me. The debris leaves me blind and stuck on my back.

I have moved to my bed, which rests inside a walk-in closet, and I can’t shake the image of the labyrinth walls hungry for my destruction, wanting to crush me. I notice the close proximity of the walls and feel them leaning towards me, trying to glide even closer. As I feel the room getting smaller around me, I abruptly decide that this is the exact last spot on the face of the planet that I want to be right now. The Caribbean, Italy, France, Australia, Antarctica, the moon. It doesn’t matter where it is, how remote a location; all I want to do is not be in my room. It’s not quite a panicked cry to get out. Rather, it feels as though 21 years of boredom have crash-landed on me, and every bone, every muscle in my body desires to go out and cure it.

I think about actually leaving. I don’t even necessarily want to go anywhere; actually, the thought of getting into the car is unappealing to me. I just absolutely do not want to be in the house right now; all of a sudden I really, really hate being here. I should leave. But where could I go? None of those remote locations promises to offer me release. So while at the moment I am stuck in this infinitely small cage of a bedroom, I also feel deserted in some wide-open plain. Maybe in Texas. Maybe Kansas. It doesn’t matter. All I know is that I can see the horizon all around me and nothing else. I desperately want to find somewhere—anywhere—to go. But there is nothing, and I realize that no matter where I go, this feeling will follow; I can’t get away. I am mentally trapped, caught in this state of mind, confined with no hope for escape.

Through the Wilderness – 2

Chapter Two

“Jesus wept.”
~ John 11: 35

“We’re going to put Bruno to sleep on Thursday, Matt.”

The words lingered in the air as I reflected on their meaning. Bruno, a mix of basset hound and beagle, had been with us since our last dog, Slider, was killed by a garbage truck when I was in second grade. The news came about two weeks before I was to go back to school for my junior year at Pacific Lutheran.

Thursday . . . What’s today? Monday? A fine time to find out about this indeed. After thirteen years of playing with my dog, of getting to know my dog, I only had four days left with him. My thoughts trailed off.

“Ok,” I said to my mom, and for a while I thought about nothing.

Bruno was a great dog—almost funny, in a way. When we were younger, we would get him excited about a tennis ball and then throw it down the hallway, where he would go grab it and bring it back to us. Then we’d throw it again, and he’d go bring it back. Then we’d throw it again, and he’d look at us, saying with his eyes, Are you stupid? I just went and got that ball twice. You go get it if you want it so badly.

“He’s just getting too old, and he’s starting to live in pain. He can’t stand when the puppies are around; they hurt him. That’s why he keeps trying to knock down the fence.”

“Yeah, I know mom. You’re right . . . “

I had known this was coming for a while—and not only because my mom had told me earlier in the summer that if he started to feel pain or wouldn’t eat that we would have to put him down. It was actually something I was quite prepared for. For about two years when he would sleep on my bed at night, he would occasionally spasm, his leg muscles jerking as if having a seizure. There was one Christmas when I was convinced that he was going to die in my bed as he slept.

Bruno had had quite the eventful life; frankly, I was almost surprised that he had made it as long as he did. When I was in middle school, he had broken off his chain where he stayed while outside, and we did not see him for another nine days. To this day I wish I could talk to him about the adventures he went on during that time. Like Slider, he had also been hit by a car, but Bruno managed to come out of it with only some scratches—and a cone on his head for a few weeks. I still remember the sad look he would get when all he wanted was to get across the room but the cone would catch on the couch.

The night before my mom took Bruno in to the vet, I took him for a very long walk. I let him go wherever he wanted, and stay there for as long as he pleased. This walk was often paused as I would break down and start to cry, sit on the ground, and hug him and pet his head the way I had habitually done for the past thirteen years. Memories poured into my head, and suddenly we weren’t walking around the park next to my house, but I was just arriving home on the bus from middle school. Being the only one home in the afternoon, it was my duty to walk Bruno. So around the park we would go, Bruno on a leash while I rode my bicycle; He was a lot faster back then.

I thought about the time when I was still small enough to use him as a pillow without squashing his ribs.

I remembered how our neighbors, before we moved, would poke at him with sticks through the fence and then could not figure out why he would go after them when they tried to climb over to come play.

At the end of our walk, Bruno did not want to go inside—I think going up the two steps was painful for him—so after some coaxing, I got him over to his outside place by the garage and chained him up for the night. Knowing I could only be with him for a few more short hours, I grabbed one of his blankets and used it as my only barrier from the cement. I slept there next to him, petting him all night.

The morning inevitably came, and I said my goodbyes to Bruno. I don’t think I would have had the strength to go in to the vet’s office with my mom and him. As the van pulled away and I realized I would never see my dog again, I retreated to my room and lay down on my bed. The tears came harder than I had ever imagined tears could come. And, knowing that I was the only one home, I did nothing to suppress them.