The Witness–Second Hand Violence
Have you ever cringed while watching someone on TV getting beaten? I have, in fact, most times I have to leave the room because the trauma of watching the abuse of another person is still with me. The scene on the TV only triggers the emotions and reactions from my own personal past. It is one of the things I have yet to come to terms with entirely. That is due to the fact that I didn’t know that watching someone else be abused, was traumatic to me. Particularly when that someone was a person that I loved and cared about. As a child, abuse in my house was like a natural disaster; it ripped through the home causing waves of terror to the witnesses and screams of pain to the victims. All one could do was stand in horror, helpless to alter the power of the violence. It never occurred to me that it could be stopped. Like an earthquake I held my breath each day that the quake did not come, knowing that it was drawing nearer with every moment. When it did come, it was as terrifying as I had feared and the aftershocks rumbled on long after the event was over. The earthquake affected everyone, not just the person caught in its path. My own healing of this kind of trauma, this second hand violence, is not complete-if healing is ever complete. I have walked both paths, the path of the victim, suffering humiliation and violence against my own mind and body, as well as the path of the witness, suffering the pangs of helplessness and self-beytrayal. Time does not heal all wounds. I am not sure time heals anything except to make the wound familiar and even comforting. Healing requires time, but without the belief and hope that something greater than the pain exists, that all that has happened has a divine reason, then time just marches on leaving the wounds unexamined, untouched and unhealed. The witness must also walk the fiery path of truth and heal the invisible wounds of the mind and heart.