A little over a week ago I wrote about two people who didn't show up. Usually, when people don't show up they disappear for a while. Both of these people came back.
One of them, the man whose wife had left him had worked hard that day, fell asleep and missed the appointment. Today he came back. Surprisingly, he had a lot to say.
I say I was surprised because few people with his background come to therapy, and much fewer still, talk about some of the things that happened to them. He is Cambodian.
He was born in a refugee camp. He has a younger sister. Once he had two older brothers and one older sister, but they were killed as they ran across a field trying to escape the government soldiers. Both of his parents survived, kind of.
His parents made it to this country to be re-settled. But unfortunately his father brought his mind and his memories with him. That meant he had violent flash-backs that led to heavy drinking and then more flashbacks. Eventually, he couldn't hold it together at all and he wandered out into the streets to get away from everyone. No one knows where he is.
That meant that my client, his mother and sister spent time in several shelters before coming up here and finding a way to establish a home.
All of these things haunt my client, as they do many of his relatives. It takes generations to begin to heal from such wounds.
Now, of course, we are part of the process of destroying another country, creating refugees and traumatized children.
But hey, this is not new. It's been like that at least since men gathered together in groups, and probably before. The skulls of decapitated villagers piled ten feet high in the center of town, just to show who is in charge. Would this be Spartans and Persians in 470 BC? the Mongols as they invaded Georgia in 1223? the European settlers slaughtering tribes of Native Americans in 1750? the Serbs in Bosnia in 1993? Hutus killing Tutsi in 1994?
Turks and Armenians? Japanese and Chinese? Jews and Palestinians? India and Pakistan? Irish and English? French and Germans? Germans and French? Vikings and Celtics? Spurs and Cavaliers?
All, of course, and many, many more.
Almost all of them glorified by major motion pictures.
2 comments:
one I want to add to your list because it's close to my heart. Chinese killing Tibetans!
With a few notable exceptions, the US hasn't had anything even closely resembling a war in a very long time. People tend to glorify things that are completely unfamiliar to them.
Then they wonder why they go to places like Iraq and come back completely, utterly, irrevocably messed up.
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