Dear
Bloggers,
I'm
having trouble working out where I am and who I am. Somehow, this
isn't disturbing, it's simply puzzling to me. I'm in a puzzle and
need to put together the clues to work out what this is all about.
Images
are popping up in my mind and somehow the pictures are mixed up and
there are people who have never been there before and that makes it
complicated. I'm sitting in the centre of a row of beige plastic
chairs. When I turn my head, I realise that my wife,is sitting next
to me. A ring of beige chairs also lines the walls. Other people,
scattered around the room, are sitting here with worried faces some
of them are crying or looking down and shuffling their feet. I get
the feeling that they don't want to be here.
A
beeping sound is coming from somewhere. To my right, people are
moving through an automatic door. I look up and see a young woman
behind a glass window. She seems to be mentally losing it, as they
just confirmed that her boyfriend has died in the chaos that is out
there, and her dark hair hasn't been brushed recently. She's on the
phone and taking notes. All of a sudden a few people show up to me
and I realize that I can not see there faces and I frown when they
approach me, as I don't really want to speak to them. I am not the
one that should give them answers, I send them over to the other side
of the room and I see them sitting down with the policeman who has a
copy of the passenger list and they are being desperate for good
news.
We
seem to be in some sort of waiting room, but I don't know why. I am
wearing my military camouflage uniform sitting with my helmet in my
hands. We are sitting in a sports hall which has been decorated as a
waiting area with here and there a few tables where policemen are
trying to give as good and as bad information . For most of the
survivors the waiting is hell.
The
sunlight is slanting through the windows on the far wall is soft; it
must be the morning light, then. My dear God we have been here for
hours and still they are bringing people in. Local cops, people from
the Red Cross and other persons like psychotherapists,
priests,ministers. The major is running the operation. And our duty
has been taken over by the own countries army and we are waiting to
get the clearance that we can go back to our base
In
one corner of the room, on a low table, there are piles of magazines.
I walk over to pick up a crying girl and then sit down with her
again. This is a young woman I guess in her late teens or early
twenties approximately my own age but she has lost everyone that she
was with. My heart breaks when I see her and send my buddy to find
someone to comfort her. As for us it's about time to leave.
Off
to my left, a child is whining. I turn to see a man and a woman, both
big, with a girl aged four or five. They look tired, as parents do
when they've been up during the night with a grumpy and worn out
child. Soon I am absorbed by their interactions; it's like watching a
show. The father lifts the girl on to his lap, looking strained. The
mother holds up a children's book, reading to her. The child listens
for a while, fidgets, and cries again. The mother tries to interest
her in one of the toys from a box in the corner, but it doesn't work.
Now I know what this is like; I'm a parent, too. They're doing their
best in this bad situation.
How
did I get to this room? A fragment comes into my mind, a dreamlike
image of driving us to the chaotic scene and me being impressed by
the sea hawk helicopters that are flying on and off. It is what I can
see from our military vehicle window. Did this really happen, or am I
imagining it?
I
turn to my wife and see that she's crying quietly: her cheeks are
pink; the rims of her eyes are red. She's sad about something, but I
don't know what. I put my arm around her shoulder and pat her gently.
"It'll be all right," I say. She quiets a little. All the
other things are in some kind of blurred image. And I wander what her
problem is, somehow I cannot reach her. It is a disturbing feeling
and I feel powerless. How in the hell can I help her when I am in
this state of mind.
As
we sit there, I feel as if I'm in a sound bubble, into which the
surrounding noises don't intrude. The crying girl doesn't irritate me
as I think she might have at another time. Instead, I feel a well of
stillness inside. I keep turning the pages of this story of my life.
Get up soldier it is time to stand up to your troubled mind and help
the one you love with all your heart. The
road will be long and tough sometimes inhospitable sometimes, but she
is not afraid as she has a well-trained soldier at her side. But
there is no way back and it looks like our horizon on fire as the sun
goes down slowly.
As
far as I can tell, it's not long before we are taken through a door.
It opens, like magic, into a wide, yellow corridor with a side table,
a high metal chair, and shelves along the walls. Have we really been
here? Did we do anything good for those people? And why am I mixed up
with all those emotions. And why am I dressed in full combat gear
with a loaded machine gun? I left the army in the autumn of 1987 that
is more then 25 years ago.
A
young military man who says he is a doctor asks us to sit in the
chairs while he stands before us. He's wearing ordinary clothes and
looks tired, speaking slowly and softly. He probably wants to go
home. The doctor would like to thank us for the quick responding to
the scene. And gives our sergeant a phone number for the ones who
might need help. At the moment we do not need anything but want to go
home. We are all trained to kill people but in this case this were
civilians who just had a good time and were killed in a weird kind of
disaster. In this case we could not save them. Man this has impacted
our team the guys have gone quiet as we have seen all to much.The
guys are all silent and some are staring with bowed head to the
floor. the situation we ended up in was totally insane. And no one
had the strength to say anything. It was quiet and lonely it felt
like a slap in the face.
Memories
lost: I don't know how long I'm with the doctor perhaps one or two
minutes and when I look up he's gone. There's that puzzling feeling
again: was he real, or am I in a dream?
Back
in the corridor, a man and a woman tell me I am to have a EMDR
session. The thought excites me. I don't think I've ever had one
before, but I know what they are: I've read reports from EMDR
patients as psychology
fascinates me because the brain is something very special,
detailing the effects of a brain that is able to send people in the
right or wrong directions. They have a lounge chair and mentally they
push me into another corridor of my mind. In and out of the disaster
we go. It is sad and reliving it is absolute no fun.
They
say the session is over, but I don't remember having it. How odd! I'm
walking with a woman, also dressed in blue; she's told me that I'm
having the next session next Thursday. I'm not sure if I've been in
state like this before, but I'm so tired that I think it would be
great to get my life back and being able to sleep without nightmares
again.
The
next morning is different from the day before. It feels as if I've
woken from a dream. I'm sure now that I've been there and that woman
next to me in my memory is not my wife but my late buddy who died of
cancer a few years later in hospital, and that something really has
happened to me. I remember more clearly the whole situation was so
crazy before we came in. I'd woken with a headache, walked to the
kitchen, taken a Panadol, and gone back to bed. That's the last
memory I have on this weird mixed up dream.
The
phone beside my bed rings, interrupting my reverie. It's traffic
control if I could work today. “And I respond yes of course what
time should I start?”
"I'm
woolly in the head, as if I'm not sure I'm really here," I reply
to my wife. "I've got a mild headache, too." and still you
are going to work she says. I call it therapy as my brain has to work
in a different way. I jump out of bed and head for the bathroom.
Brushing my teeth, shave and hop into the shower.
It's
three months after my initial psychologists admission, and two months
after I was formally discharged from therapy again, where I spent
eight unsettling and confining sessions. It's mid-afternoon and I'm
reading a book. It's easy to follow, and it doesn't matter if I've
forgotten some of the earlier details. I like the way of writing, and
I am fascinated by the story: I'm not the only one on a path of
survival. Initially I tried reading a story of a deeply harmed woman
that has survived a war, but it was like struggling through thick,
deep mud.
I
would read a page, and by the time I reached the next, I'd forgotten
what the previous one had said. I go back to reading, settling
comfortably into my chair; the idea of seeing the doctor slips into
my back pocket. But my brain continues processing this information in
its own way.
Then,
a thought comes suddenly to my mind: if I've had a set back, and
that's not physical… I haven't had a mental breakdown. It all came
up again due to a very different situation. They harmed my wife and
the killing machine was woken up from the dead end corner of my
brain. I was going to take this bad ass out of his magic life. And
everyone that would be in the way. The bastard has been lucky that he
wasn't home as I had figured out were he was living. I couldn't stop
the blindness and the deep angered soldier that was taken over. Lucky
part of the situation was that he was not home as I still see him as
the enemy. Thank God I did not harm anyone. Relief floods through me.
Fucking fantastic.
Recovery:
All of this happened on the evening hours of the 6th of
March 1987 But cue seven months of visits to doctors psychotherapists
and a series of tests. I've been told that I should exercise, walk on
flat ground if I go for a walk, read nothing harder than the
newspaper. I try to follow doctor's orders to take it easy and avoid
stress. The stress thing is a process of discovery. The invisible
hole in my head is a trickster; I don't know when or how it's going
to trip me up next. My body's not behaving properly either. And that
came up years later due to a stressed life.
I'm
anxious to get on with my recovery, and the more I read, the more it
seems like a computer-based cognitive training program is what I
need. The program should concentrate on building the basic auditory
skills first, and then the components of speech and finally
comprehension.
Now
the situation has stabilized and I am calm again, yet I must give
closure to the old situation and learn to live with what happened
then. Furthermore, I will have to build on a completely new start for
my wife because she never will be the same again and will have to
learn to live with her post-traumatic stress disorder. Will I ever
find the peace and able to deal with the false world that simply
seeks to amass money and is not looking for happiness.
It
is the time that heals all wounds, but there is always a scar on my
soul and that scar will fade with aging. Sometimes it will itch and
sometimes it will be hurting and feel like stabbing but it will never
disappear. It's something you learn to live with and gradually no one
is sensing that you have a scar. "In peacetime you are much more
affected by the war." said an old veteran a couple of weeks ago.
The
Old Sailor,
