I recently bumped into insensitivity about the war consequences caused by the pure ignorance. It was in company of two women, one of which has even two brothers in USA army, but apparently they do not even comprehend what kind of the emotional effect war has on people.
Recently those girls invited me on a camping trip here; older of them actually organizing it. Younger of them I actually considered friend, up to that event.
Silly me.
In the moment of the openness I admitted to them that I feel uncomfortable with the idea of camping because it reminds me on the conditions refugees usually suffer. Instead of at least ignoring my comment, they started to ridicule me. Older one took her own experience as an example of how I should get rid all of that war consequences; she compared her experience of slight fear of the height that she apparently ‘cured’ by learning rock climbing with my situation. For me, that sounded like an advice to take an aspirin if you have pneumonia. I still remember last time when I was talking to professional counsellor and that person told me that I need help of the specialist, someone who specialized in post-traumatic disorders.
It was clear for me that both of the girls reacted in such insensitive way simply because of ignorance. That’s why I did not made any scene nor showed in any way that something was wrong to the rest of the company.
But that night I had nightmares.
My guess that the major reason for those nightmares was not so much reminding of the war horrors I went trough but the fact that I truly consider one of those women as a friend and I never thought that I will get ridiculed by her for the condition I’m trying to heal within myself.
Now I do not wish even to see any of those women anymore. I was thinking last few days should I tell them; show them, in any way what they did to me. But, I decided not to. I decided simply to avoid them.
I do not wish any more nightmares, I do not wish to be troubled with all that, and I definitely do not need someone who I trusted enough to open up to hurt me again in such way.
10 September 2009
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