The Same Coin

A call from someone from the victim assistance office, in conjunction with a random book review set off a long train of thought this week. First, the call - part follow up, but mainly to let me know that my attacker is going to trial this week with jury selection, and to expect to be subpoenaed to testify. The person was reviewing my claims for expenses and noted that I hadn't filed any claims in regards to counseling, etc. and I shared how I felt I'd achieved closure and had moved forward. It actually wasn't a book review as much as part of a top 100 best novels and #94 was a book by Kazuo Ishiguro.  Ishiguro is probably best known for 'Remains of the Day' and 'Never Let Me Go', but the thrust of the article was that Ishiguro's ethnic ancestry and his British upbringing came together in 'An Artist of the Floating World' as a tour de force in unreliable narration. In my own words, we all sanitize our personal history (and memory)  to avoid facing unpleasant truths. At the other extreme, the unpleasant memories become the only truth some people's minds can retain, forcing them to come up with the same flawed conclusions. This is how I categorize the behavior of my attacker. But am I the flip side of the same coin? More on this.

One person whose counsel I trust has suggested that my coping mechanism includes compartmentalizing (it does). And one of the things I've compartmentalized is the inherent evil in what happened and I have yet to come to grips with that evil. I'm not sure about the truth of that, I'm not even sure what that means. My first thought is to find the abyss, wherever it may be, and stare into it. Upon reflection, I reject that idea, not for fear of having the abyss stare back into me,  but because mainly because darkness is merely an absence of light.

But back to the other thought. There are two extremes in the way we can respond to trauma. We can compartmentalize it/ deny it. Or we can let the pain from that experience dominate our thoughts. It's that thought that's given me closure; we all have different coping mechanisms - but they all stem from the same source - dealing with some sort of trauma. And I've learned to respect the amount of strength and courage it takes to deal with bad memories in a healthy way.