DOWN SOUTH
Trauma nation
Panicked and incoherent.
Or, as we say, breakdown of cognitive efficiency. Loss of emotional control. Impairment of moral judgment.
In a nutshell, this is how the human mind reacts to the first stages of psychological trauma.
Since apprehending the Ampatuan massacre, I had been retreating at intellectualizing the full import of events and the cacophony of reactions from various sectors. It doesn’t take a psychologist to see that we are all traumatized.
I am a trained clinician. And yet, the events and the reactions had been at some points cause for me to zonk out of my mind for a while. Extreme threat. Retreat. Retreat.
I am also a media practitioner who, until that fateful Monday in November, thought I was adequately protected out there because I am a woman and I have a press card. How many times have I wandered those roads, asking questions here, stopping for a cigarette there, and putting out my thumb at passing cars when I judged it was time to go?
I am a teacher, and students and lazy TV reporters look to me for answers. Not in so many words, the question is asked: How do we deal with secondary trauma? How do we heal?
A close friend wails to me in anguish. It breaks my heart to see her self-flagellating for worrying only about finding the right lotion by trial and error and keeping her credit card bills current in order to carry on the search for her holy grail. If this world were fair, she has every right to her trivial pursuits. If this world were fair, 23 November 2009 in Bgy. Salman, Ampatuan, Maguindanao wouldn’t have happened. Then my friend wouldn’t have to wrestle with survivor’s guilt for something that was never within her control.
Blame, blame, blame. Most circumspect lady tells me, “May I borrow you killer heels? I want to hit Gloria with it. In the face.”
Scary.
(The heels aren’t mine, by the way. I snitched them from my daughter’s shoe rack.)
Blame is another way of saying, “Will someone please take control because I can’t do it myself?!”
Farther away in Japan, Jojo Abinales is rendered mute. He checks in to say he’s having the devil of a time finding the right words for an article on Mindanao warlords. Jo, we need sober voices now. Tell it as it is.
From Maryland, David sends me words of consolation. He registers my fears and confusion and holds out his hand as he had when we were young and stupid and yet to know that there is such a place named Ampatuan on the map where women reporters are shot between the legs before they are shot in the brain.
From Dubai, Sara tears out her hair in lamentation:
i cried when the realization sank in.. muslims killings muslims. my fellow muslims hurting women. my friends who lost their mom. and it happened in maguindanao, where i am from. and i am countries away.. where i am ironically safely at home.
what do i do? ..it is not in my hands to directly and instantly change what happened. i started to think about my religion. i came up with a plan so that i may contribute to make things better. i thought it would be best that: (1) i would stop the negative images associated with my religion; (2) i should know my religion better because i believe that Islam is a religion of peace and that it is a tool for me to find peace and stop such violence. I read pages and threads of comments cursing my religion and my fellow muslims (it frustrates me); and(3) i need to find a job. despite my struggle to find something to contribute to help my land and my fellow filipinos, i still need to feed myself.
so much for my grand plans. i would get up in the morning after struggling in the night to sleep only to find myself uninspired to work on my plan. my sadness grips me...i can do nothing but feel sorry for everything and for myself. the incident is just one more thing to be sad about. i could no longer find that strength inside me and it worries me.
I’ve never been this down, ma’am gail, and I’m sorry if i am disappointing you. i am doing my best to get back. i know i don’t have all the time in the world but thinking about that makes me more stressed. i don’t know what to do anymore.
I’m sure many out there could relate to Sara’s woes. We all feel the dragging emotions, the urgent need to do something, anything, only to be weighed down by the weight of the problem we are confronted with. In times of crisis, we need an authoritative leader. Failing that, we need the comfort of specific directions to our actions.
But Sara had long been gone from my classroom. And while she may not recognize her resources now, I know I armed her enough. Here, I talk to her as an adult and as a friend:
What happened was very terrible and we are all moved by it. Your reaction is not abnormal, Sar. Personally, I have put myself under “house arrest” because I woke up to find hubby looking at me with so much fear and anguish in his eyes. He had a nightmare. I did not have to make him ask me to stay put. This incident made me check my priorities. It shook up my belief that I would be protected than most out there because I am a woman and I have a press card.
What sees me through is that to my personal knowledge that I have more going for my protection than merely being a woman with a press card. I also know that there are men who value and protect us women for what we are. From my experience working with the military in the last few years, I know that the AFP today is generally peopled by principled professional soldiers. We might still see a peaceful resolution to this, despite our lack of confidence in the government, the police, the media, and in seemingly every other pillar or our society. As terrible as it was, it did provide us this opportunity to test the workings of our democratic systems. I have faith that we may yet make the grade.
Traumatizing as it was, this is today. We can’t dwell too much on 23 November 2009 and how it rewrote for us the world we live in. We can’t dwell too much on yesterday when we still have to control today in order to direct our tomorrow.
Be a good citizen of our country, Sar. In the end, as good citizens, our responsibility is to show to ourselves that we are not a country where bad things happen. In our own little patch of the world, we take control and make things come out right.
I may be on a self-imposed house arrest now, but I try to do my bit to help the intrepid and the committed do their job out there where I choose not to be, to inject the sober voice that heads off tension in our bigger community, and to affirm our soldiers for staying true despite all sorts of pressure. At no other time do our soldiers need the community’s recognition. As a psychologist, I know that personal commitment is strongest when we know that those we respect and care about depend on us to do the right thing.
At the same time, I also teach my daughters to hug the ground and do the snake crawl. :)
