Silencing, Respect and a Case of SARS

Hong Kong

While sipping ice coffee the news comes on.

Doug goes, “There is another case of SARS, and that’s the guy on TV.”

I went, “I don’t want to know” and promptly hid under my coat.

He goes, “No. Really look. They are wearing masks.”

I go, “Really I don’t watch the news. I really can’t deal with it if it comes around again. It was so horrible.”

I can’t remember what he said, but he made a joke.

I went, “It’s NOT funny! It’s so NOT FUNNY. You didn’t live through it! You don’t know. You don’t understand! The doctor, the private medical doctor who died, he was a friend of my family!” and went back to hiding under my jacket. I peek back out, “I knew two medical workers and one friend of a friend who got it” and dived back underneath, pouting and hating him at the same time.

“Look,” he musters in his compassionate and slightly defensive voice, “I understand…”

“No, you don’t! You can’t!”

“I don’t mean that. I mean.. will you listen!”

I pull the jacket off over my head and put my sunglasses on instead. “What.”

“What I meant to say was, I understand how it’s frustrating for someone to say they understand, or not take seriously something you experienced because I went through….” [insert D Fresh’s post he will write one day]. I hate it when people try to minimize it. Coz they don’t understand.”

I nodded and let him finish his story. Coz what he saw and felt was frightening too.

I went onto tell him some more things about what happened to me on 911 and what it was like after and described the scary left over effects of PTS. And how it is so utterly incomprehensible for people to understand how you get it half way around the world, and how maybe it was really cumulative of certain events in my life. Things only maybe two other people know about. I told him, even if I hardly know him because I trusted him to be respectful, and allow me to feel the way I do because I experienced different things from him and vice versa.

We went onto talk about atrocities, and all the mechanisms of silencing, and how people put fear into others so they don’t get to tell their stories because it fits their agenda not to have people know the truth.

He said, “There is strength in silence you know. People who go through certain things, don’t have to talk about it sometimes because they are strong already. They know what it is, and that’s good enough. People who don’t go through it, don’t understand. Some people can, well some people can use language. Get it across.”

I know what he means.

But telling is a sign that it’s over, and it’s okay to speak because there is no one out there or even yourself who says you can’t anymore. You pass the story on and let someone else tells theirs.