A friend, a Marine, texted early in the morning, speaking of guilt. He served his time; it wasn't enough. When he asked for an extension, wanted to return to duty and was told no, the sinister-looks-like-shame whispered into his ear: said none of his training, time, sacrifice meant anything since he didn't die with the rest of his unit in Afghanistan.
After all, if you are trained to take lives, shouldn't you give yours as payment? If not, did you really complete your mission?
A solider. A survivor. A shushed guilt.
Someone else I know lost his marriage. He tried; she tried. Time passed, and one decided it was easier to be roommates rather than lovers. One thought about working on a marriage; eventually, they settled on divorce instead. Packing up boxes in an Indian summer, he stopped, found a chair. Talked about the mourning of a relationship, wondering why they even did it. What good is a marriage if it ends with a signature and separated CDs?
A geek. A mourner. A socially acceptable failing.
A kid, hormonal and angry, yelled as clothes fell out of an overstuffed closet. Dresses, jackets, coats, waves struck, stifled, beat back by the hanger still in hand. Growling in frustration, she asked why leave a house with closets which actually hold clothes to live in one without locks on the doors. Why make it through the bruises, the nosebleeds at school, and anger just to face this blinding light of life? How is this better?
A child. A remainder. A stifled stigma.
Something coats guilt in darker, slippier things. It's hard to name, to claim, to own. And the coating camouflages this healthy thing until it looks sinister like shame.
But at the core, shame requires some sort of death payment - death of innocence, joy, physical life. A noble idea, to be able to right a wrong with a life; except these wrongs require something more than powerful than death: a life.
The Armed Forces train to preserve life. Marriages begin to solidify, express committed love. And abuse, well, the only good which can come from that is surviving it.
Surviving any traumatic event can be its own bloody battle. Choosing to carry the beautiful weight of memory of lives lost, or homes no long whole, requires a quieter, less obvious glory; a taciturn strength harder, too, as the dead can't speak. And the living have to trust broken others with their pain.
Modern medication and therapy offer to take the edge off these sharp memories, the still-searing, haunting hope it didn't happen, or somehow ended differently. But the survivor still has to do the work; to deal with the bitterness, anger (hurt left to fester) or one of three things happen.
2. You keep needing more and more of the same meds to maintain the same level of sort-of-kind-of-if-you-squint functional.
3. You'll need harder, more and different meds, more, rougher, harsher therapy. All of the meds will require more meds for the side effects; the supports who could hold your pain before will stop, then disappear, all ending in a point of medicated, technically-not-labeled-yet,-but-certainly-not-living denial-controlled zombiehood.
After all, if you are trained to take lives, shouldn't you give yours as payment? If not, did you really complete your mission?
A solider. A survivor. A shushed guilt.
Someone else I know lost his marriage. He tried; she tried. Time passed, and one decided it was easier to be roommates rather than lovers. One thought about working on a marriage; eventually, they settled on divorce instead. Packing up boxes in an Indian summer, he stopped, found a chair. Talked about the mourning of a relationship, wondering why they even did it. What good is a marriage if it ends with a signature and separated CDs?
A geek. A mourner. A socially acceptable failing.
A kid, hormonal and angry, yelled as clothes fell out of an overstuffed closet. Dresses, jackets, coats, waves struck, stifled, beat back by the hanger still in hand. Growling in frustration, she asked why leave a house with closets which actually hold clothes to live in one without locks on the doors. Why make it through the bruises, the nosebleeds at school, and anger just to face this blinding light of life? How is this better?
A child. A remainder. A stifled stigma.
Something coats guilt in darker, slippier things. It's hard to name, to claim, to own. And the coating camouflages this healthy thing until it looks sinister like shame.
But at the core, shame requires some sort of death payment - death of innocence, joy, physical life. A noble idea, to be able to right a wrong with a life; except these wrongs require something more than powerful than death: a life.
The Armed Forces train to preserve life. Marriages begin to solidify, express committed love. And abuse, well, the only good which can come from that is surviving it.
Surviving any traumatic event can be its own bloody battle. Choosing to carry the beautiful weight of memory of lives lost, or homes no long whole, requires a quieter, less obvious glory; a taciturn strength harder, too, as the dead can't speak. And the living have to trust broken others with their pain.
Modern medication and therapy offer to take the edge off these sharp memories, the still-searing, haunting hope it didn't happen, or somehow ended differently. But the survivor still has to do the work; to deal with the bitterness, anger (hurt left to fester) or one of three things happen.
1. You kill yourself. The story ends; your pain wins. Period.
2. You keep needing more and more of the same meds to maintain the same level of sort-of-kind-of-if-you-squint functional.
3. You'll need harder, more and different meds, more, rougher, harsher therapy. All of the meds will require more meds for the side effects; the supports who could hold your pain before will stop, then disappear, all ending in a point of medicated, technically-not-labeled-yet,-but-certainly-not-living denial-controlled zombiehood.
Eventually, option 3 will cycle back to option 1, as shame will choke whatever life still seeps from the drug-haze of swirled emotions when you realize you've purposefully chosen to place those you love in their own mourning cycle.
The best - and no question, hardest, most painful - option to this story is to stand in the pain and sing the stories you had the privilege to be part of.
Because that's what survivors do.
That's why we need them. And why they must be saved.
To paraphrase Miss Saigon, survivors are the living reminders of all the good we have left to do.
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