Trauma

I think of a fictional person. He is a pacifist — not because he read about it, but because he has experienced violence and rejects it. He comes from a country where men must be strong and are not permitted to show shame. He flees. He arrives here. He carries something with him. The conviction that peace is possible if someone starts it. He wanted to contribute here. Not as a gesture — because he knows what happens when no one does. He has seen where hate leads. He wanted to live the opposite. ...

Herbert Kickl is calling for a “healthy slap” for children. The adjective is a rhetorical trick. It is meant to turn violence into medicine. As if there were a sick slap and a healthy one. As if the boundary between discipline and abuse were a matter of dosage. It is not. Children can never help it. They do what parents, surroundings, and culture have taught them. Every “difficult” behaviour in a child is a message about the system in which it lives. ...

I write this not from theory. I was a victim long enough to know what that feels like from the inside. And I have myself oppressed — made people feel small, relieved myself at their expense, passed on the burden that lay on me. Both belong to me. Neither is to be glossed over. Today I am free. Or more precisely: I am on the way. I am trying to be a warrior of light, in Coelho’s sense — that is, someone who falls, rises again, doubts, keeps going. Not a hero. A practitioner. ...

It was a hard day. Someone I love was transferred to a more intensive psychiatric ward. I was there. There was trust. That is enough to say. The Scene At a door. My hand. A sentence, quietly: “They will do you good.” Trust had found a way through the storm. What I felt in that moment: love. Simple. Complete. Fear too, yes — but the courage was greater. And the courage came from the fear that someone would experience what I had to experience. ...