Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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I had PTSD nightmares last night about my torture during the dictatorship here in Uruguay in the 1970s. It's the first time I've had nightmares during my week long visit here so far.
They were triggered by a news story in the paper yesterday. A man from the 1970s resurfaced and gave an interview to a newspaper yesterday. His name is Amodio Perez, and he was a member of the resistance to the dictatorship. But he turned traitor and betrayed his comrades, naming names to the military in exchange for free passage to Spain under a new name, Gustavo.
The whole story, with his photo, was in the newspaper yesterday:
http://www.elobservador.com.uy/el-dia-que-amodio-paso-llamarse-gustavo-n665028
Now, it's important to note that he did not betray me--heck, I was a kid at the time. But he brought on the dictatorship's victory over the resistance and that led years later to the dictatorship's mistreatment of thousands upon thousands of people, including me.
So it's a nightmare to me that people can be traitors like that. He got away with it and lives in luxury in Europe. He still gives interviews to the media in which he's still not sorry. I don't get people like that--they scare me. I guess the silver lining is that in democracy Uruguay allows even him the free speech to say what he wants. In democracy now, too, Uruguay allows the free press to be at liberty to print what he says.
My trip here has been overwhelmingly positive and healing for my PTSD this week. But people like him are a nightmare to me. After reading his interview in the newspaper yesterday, I literally had my first PTSD nightmares of this Uruguay visit. They were not about the past. They were about the present, and how he is still out there now. He's creepy.
They were triggered by a news story in the paper yesterday. A man from the 1970s resurfaced and gave an interview to a newspaper yesterday. His name is Amodio Perez, and he was a member of the resistance to the dictatorship. But he turned traitor and betrayed his comrades, naming names to the military in exchange for free passage to Spain under a new name, Gustavo.
The whole story, with his photo, was in the newspaper yesterday:
http://www.elobservador.com.uy/el-dia-que-amodio-paso-llamarse-gustavo-n665028
Now, it's important to note that he did not betray me--heck, I was a kid at the time. But he brought on the dictatorship's victory over the resistance and that led years later to the dictatorship's mistreatment of thousands upon thousands of people, including me.
So it's a nightmare to me that people can be traitors like that. He got away with it and lives in luxury in Europe. He still gives interviews to the media in which he's still not sorry. I don't get people like that--they scare me. I guess the silver lining is that in democracy Uruguay allows even him the free speech to say what he wants. In democracy now, too, Uruguay allows the free press to be at liberty to print what he says.
My trip here has been overwhelmingly positive and healing for my PTSD this week. But people like him are a nightmare to me. After reading his interview in the newspaper yesterday, I literally had my first PTSD nightmares of this Uruguay visit. They were not about the past. They were about the present, and how he is still out there now. He's creepy.
...I focus on doing the good that is right in front of me to do. That way I am happy.
I grew up on stories of what Nazis and Soviets did to my grandparents fams back in Poland, and one day a few months ago, Hubby watched a documentary about a Nazi who was hunted for war crimes and saw no wrong in what he did or why, just shrugged at it all... and I cried so hard my stomach hurt. My grandmas cousin died at a camp for not agreeing to give up someone, because he was a person of conscience and said he would not let that someone go to the trains... no one knew for sure what that meant, only that no one came back, and so the Nazis said the guy would take that someones place.... He died.
Years after the war, that someone was in the US talking to a newspaper about how Poles were awful people and deserved all the ww2 hell because of their antisemitism... but my grandmas cousin, a catholic nobody, died in that guys place...could have turned himover and revealed a hiding place, but stood firm...
All such people baffle me, Muji. To not care what harm they did, or what harm was done in their name.
An Orthodox coworker of mine said it well when we were trading stories of our fams from Polnd. one lunchtime some 15 years ago. I think it is apt for us PTSDers
Being hated either makes a heart open to love, or blind to it. But hating breaks the heart.