Question:
I know that I kid around a lot. It is my defense mechanism – but this is serious – don’t read if you are vunerable today it is storming here and that always triggers me badly I have something inside that I want to get outside. And writing is a good distraction when you are triggered I call this the day I went crazy: this isnt a joke so if you thought I was kidding – turn back now if you are vunerable After seventeen years with the Military Police, I thought I had seen it all – been there done that was pretty much how I felt – so when I was sent on tour to east timor I thought – no biggie, just another banana republic shithole – It was a bit nastier than my other tours of duty – wilder and less industrialized So far I was able to maintain my distance from the suffering all around me – in fact I was pretty indifferent about it – you can’t do your job in these situations and cope emotionally. I wouldn’t allow myself to feel anything for anyone. The whole place was the epitome of suffering and atrocity – violence – mass graves – genocide – starvation – nothing I hadn’t seen before so I didn’t care. But that is another story. I was there a few months when due to a miscommunication, I was stranded. I checked my GPS and found out that a straight line back to camp through the jungle would cut miles off the distance – so off I went. I was sick from the badly purified water, bone tired, and humping through the bush in heavy armour plus weapons and ammo and it was so very hot. I was exhausted. My feet were hamburger from being wet all the time and the bugs were atrocious. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. In the jungle I smelled woodsmoke and I came upon a corrugated iron shack patched with blue plastic that the natives made for themselves. I heard a high pitched keening singsong, the natives songs sound discordant to my ear, as I am sure mine sounds to them. Anyways I came to a bit of a clearing, hogs rooting through the muck and I saw a woman rocking a naked child of about a year and a half old. It was her keening singsong that I had heard from the bush. She paid me no notice, singing and rocking back and forth, but the child was looking straight at me. I was in a bit of a fog I guess from the fatigue and I was reaching into my leg pocket to get a piece of ration chocolate, the natives were crazy about that chocolate. I noticed the flies, much more than usual swarming around the child, and it wasn’t until one landed on the baby’s eye and the baby didn’t blink that I realized that the kid was dead. Now I know what the expression ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ means. Realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I stood there staring, the mother kept rocking, paying me no notice. Something in me snapped, my legs gave out and I sat down hard in the muck with the hogs. Felt something inside me tear. I can’t explain it better than that. The strongest emotion I felt was shame. How dare I feel sorry for myself when my problems were infinitesmally small compared to what was going on around me. I don’t remember how I got back to camp. Something had changed though. Important things didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I was (and still am) numb. A few months later I came down with malaria and got rotated back. I don’t understand it. That wasn’t the first dead kid I’ve seen. Up to this point I’d seen much death and was completely indifferent. Now it seems that every ghost of every bad incident I had witnessed or was involved with visit me constantly in thoughts and dreams and I have no way of shutting them out. Sometimes the pain of several incidents will pool together and swarm me. Can’t run from it and can’t hide from it. I wish they would invent an amnesia pill. — la nerezza cade con acciaio pioggia les gouttelettes argenture cachent la douleur y miedos ocultados secreto del susurro eisige leise Risse derSchattenk
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