A couple of weeks ago I realized I was crispy fried. I'd been teaching for more than ten years. I've learned how to count to ten in a bunch of languages. Sometimes I think I've heard enough stories so I must be getting a thicker skin, but eventually I hear another horror story, another glimpse into a war that's enough to make me run for the bathroom. (Some people weep, I throw up. Frankly I'd rather cry.)
I used to write down their stories. On this relatively new computer I have the story Amira told me how her fifteen year old and her baby were blown up right in front of her and she lost most of her hearing. There's an entry about how Francis showed me the stump that doesn't heal right after they loped off his right arm and left him to die. Actually, I've forgotten most of their names but not the stories.
I used to think that if I took on the stories I could share the pain. No way. NO one can do take it on. It's not neatly Hallmark. . . and Just hearing the stories makes me run for the bathroom, gives me nightmares. It took ten years, but I finally have reached it. It's like secondhand smoke, I guess. Secondhand PTSD. It started to change me about the time I finally realized that what they're telling me is real.
I reached both extremes about the same time. The "can't hear another word" and the "so what?"
I knew I was done the other day when someone related her story about fleeing her country with only the clothes on her back and and I had the urge to say, yeah, well you still had your husband and your baby. In other words, I now save my responses for "bad" stories like the ones about how every man in a village was gunned down or a woman's baby was slung head first against a wall as she was raped. Competitive misery? Time for me to check out.
And there's other thing. They keep coming. More of them. One war ends, that particular ethnic group trickles away, sort of being absorbed into a community, but not really. The group only has three months to adjust to the new world they didn't ask to join. These are refugees, not immigrants.
They leave and I forget how to count to ten or say "please speak more slowly" in a particular language. There's a break and I don't go in for a couple of weeks.
But now I know that pause means nothing. It only means another group has to be processed and a new set of faces will be coming through soon. The wars don't end and the misery never stops.
I'll still sell the crafts, but I have to take a break from the stories of horror. Unlike the people I meet, I get to take a break--because I really can't take on their burden.
I do have a prayer and it's turned ugly after years of stories.
THe mantra I wish, I wish, I wish--and this is the thing I really lie awake and think about--I wish anyone who ever had a positive thing to say about any preemptive war or military offence...Lieberman? Bush? Putin? Jihadists? Cheney? Taliban? Bin Ladin? You guys? All of you should suffer and since you can't take on the burden you created, you should at least feel the need to run to the bathroom now and again.
Prison is too good for anyone who has the ability to end a war and doesn't do everything in his power to do it. And think about it, my plan makes sense. Life behind prison walls doesn't actually do anyone they've harmed any good.
I wish they had to take the job of listening to and recording those civilians' stories, and not just for ten years. I say the rest of their lives, minimum.
They should be forced to hear the stories, see the missing arms, eyes, the dull faces of little kids who've spent their life in war zones and refugee camps.
White collar war criminals (Erik Prince?) should be forced to give the money they earned in the wars to help improve everything from the crummy, airless offices and the endless bureaucratic forms for resettlement to aiding the lives they've ruined. And then they would have to actively help the people they turned into refugees. They'd have to go live in apartments in bad neighborhoods, far too small for a large family existing with no material goods except the thrown-away items scrounged from charity. They should pay for the therapy that these people need and never get (because there're no native speaking professionals for them).
That's what those wealthy, worthless men and women should do. Perhaps they could justify their existence if they can teach the refugees they created--people who once were skilled farmers--how to survive with dignity in an urban world. Maybe eventually they'd be blessed with some form of grace in return, but I doubt it.
I haven't been. I only throw up and now I'm running away, for a while at any rate.