Accidentally Alive-TRIGGER WARNING

It's the New Year. I want someone to hold me while I empty my soul of tears, while I usher in the new year with a good cry.  

I have years of tears backed up in me.   Going back to when I refused to cry when I was tortured my the military in Uruguay at 15.  Going back before that when I would defend my mother from my father's wife beatings.  

I would stand in the way, fists down by my side so as to keep from hitting back like him, and take the punches meant for her.  Coward that she was, she saw that and took advantage thereafter, making up lies as reasons why my father should hit me and not her to begin with.  That was the thanks I got from her for taking her punches.

I am 63 years old now, and as a New Year begins, it comes back to me again that for another year I'm only accidentally alive.  I'm literally alive only by accident.  When I was 15 the Uruguayan dictatorship had "death squads" who roamed our home town of Montevideo, Uruguay's capital city.  

Their vehicles were clear to see every day, as seeing them rove through the population kept the people in line through state terror.  They were US-supplied army green Chevy pick up trucks that we called "kangaroos," because they carried a trained death squad in their pouch, as it were.

The death squads were trained by the CIA's Daniel Mitrione in a torture academy he ran, coincidentally, in a house in my own neighborhood where I grew up.  I knew him.  His son and I went to school together.  Dan Mitrione was murdered by a Uruguayan for what he'd done. There was a famous movie about it called "State of Siege."  

But was too late.  The torture Mitrione  taught went on without him, and 5 years after his death, it was used on me.  One of Mitrione's favorite lessons had been how to use an electric cattle prod on a person's genitals.  After my torture, for the rest of my life I'd have difficulty fathering children.

My life was changed ever so quickly.  I was walking past a vacant lot on my street 4 blocks from my house on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  3 other friends and I were walking down my street happily chattering the way teens do  Then a miltary death squad's "kangaroo" truck literally leapt like a kangaroo at us with its engine roaring from out of the vacant lot's tall weeds.

The other 3 guys jumped out of the way to the right while I leapt to the left.  That split second reaction set the stage for how in my future I'd never be a father and they would.  

Since I leapt to the left, when the truck slammed on its brakes I was on the side where the driver's door was.  The office in charge was behind the wheel, so I was the nearest boy to him when he exited his vehicle.  Since I was the most handy of the 4 of us, I was the teen he grabbed to torture to teach us all a lesson.

That lesson was to obey the dictatorship's dictates, no exceptions for Sundays.  The military had taken over Uruguay's 100 year old democracy that year, and in so doing they had abolished two things.   

1.  They had abolished the right to vote, not just in politics but in anything, including who'd be captain of your soccer team.  One of the generals had boasted, "there will not be a single vote cast in in this country for the next 50 years."  He was wrong, it was for 12, the 12 Years the Netflix film on Uruguay calls The Twelve Year Night.

2.  They had abolished the right to assemble, meaning there would be no protests in the streets and no meetings to organize against the dictators.  My evangelist father and I had been arrested twice on that count before because of his revival meetings, so I was well aware.  The dictators' decree stated clearly that the assembly of more than 3 individuals was strictly forbidden.

That Sunday the number of us boys walking down my street together had been 1 in excess of that decree's limit.  For that crime against the dictatorship, the crime of walking down my own street on a Sunday, I was tortured.  Then I was subjected to what turnedout to be a mock execution.  That's why they called them "death squads."  

Decades later, we're sill missing 30,000 innocent people the dictatorship's death squads tortured to death and then dropped into the sea from US-supplied army helicopters.  Their skeletons wash up on the shore at high tide still off and on even today.  I came close to being one of those 30,000 who ended up in a watery grave.  What prevented it from happening was a weapon's misfire.  When after torturing me in the street in front of my 3 friends so as to teach them all a lesson, when he put his pistol to my head and pulled the trigger as I knelt before him, it jammed.  He cleared it, put it to my head again, pulled the trigger, and it jammed again.

Embarrassed in front of the squad he led, the officer was so annoyed he let me go in laughing in disgust.  I stayed accidentally alive and was mocked for it.

Every new year I take stock of that fact:  that after age 15, I've only been alive year by year by sheer accident.  I've made the most of the gift of that accident.  But I'm well aware every day that there was a plan to separate my brain matter from inside my skull where it is kept.  I'm well aware that the officer of that death squad tried, not one but twice, literally to blow my brains out.  

Since I was lucky enough to have my brains stay inside my head, I've tried to make the most of the use of my brains. I earned 2 doctorates, 1 in Latin American literature about torture testimonials and 1 in psychology to work with death and dying.  Now I'm a Community Leader at DS PTSD.

But not a day goes by that I don't realize my brains are supposed to be blown out, not in my head.  I'm a product of dumb luck, I'm only accidentally alive.  So since I'm now 63 and that happened to me when I was 15, Happy New Year to extra accidental year number 49.