Five years ago I was preparing to leave Canada, never return. I believed I was going to get closure at last for a life of secrets and lies. I was scared, happy anxious and excited believing there would be an easier road ahead of me now that the decision was made to take this step. Yes I really should have known better, but because I still have the faith of a child, I trusted this journey would lead me home. The road brought me back here, a place I never believed I’d see again. “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans” – John Lennon said it perfectly.
These past three years have taught me a great deal, but with each passing day, my hope to return home gets weaker. The time has long passed for my return to mean anything to anyone. They brought me to Canada because this was the best place to ensure I would forget my father – no one here understands or cares about who he was in this country. His sacrifice is completely lost here. So if no one can see his importance, how can they understand the significance of my story? As long as I’m here fighting to survive, I will remain one of the disappeared. Who I am means nothing in this country where complacency is a way of being.
I have been quite angry lately, tired beyond reason and completed irritated by the victim culture we have allowed to happen. North Americans do not know what sacrifice is, they are so sheltered and removed from reality they cannot yet comprehend the fall that’s coming. The landing will come as a shock, even to those who think they are awake because they still believe there are replacements for our current leaders. They still believe in the fairy tale of our systems. They still wait for someone else to save them. People still believe if they pay their taxes and vote, they have a voice, they can make a change for the better. It’s far too late for that. It is becoming obvious to me that yes, I will have to face what I did as a child in order to have the closure needed. The changes we are about to go through as a country will bring me full circle to the beginning of my childhood. Time is short…….
In order for one to heal from emotional trauma, they must first realize they are not the only ones to suffer. In order for a whole culture to move forward and reconcile, they must realize they are not the only culture to suffer the fate of a conquering outside force. Only then can they stop putting themselves at the front of line insisting they get the most for what they suffered. If you make a statement like “every child matters”, then sell t-shirts promoting this idea, the image on the shirt should be INclusive, not EXclusive to one race. It was actually seeing such a t-shirt displayed in the window of the drug store here in town which set me off. The slogan was accompanied by the image of an Indian head. This tells me that every child matters as long as it is of Indian heritage. This shirt is indicative of how far down the rabbit hole this race has gone. The indigenous of this country have lost their way – they are nothing like their ancestors. The truth is, they cannot survive without the government handouts which come from those of us who pay taxes, the very people they are blaming for every problem they have. It’s time for them to sing a new song. It’s time for them to take responsibility for their decisions, their actions or inactions which have created a life of total dependency and victimhood. They are not blameless in their own history before the settlers arrived. Did they not raid villages, kill the elders and men, take the women and children for slaves, steal the food? No, they were not perfect human beings who never hurt others. They killed settlers who never raised a hand against them. They kept the women and children of those settlers as slaves. They signed the treaties, they took the bribes, they gave their children up to the residential schools willingly. Greed has been behind the conquering of every culture in every country. Greed is behind every war. War has never been about helping the people who live in the country getting bombed into oblivion, it is and always has been about controlling the resources.
Life is a series of lessons, we are taught by experiencing all sides of the faceted diamond of life. We cannot understand completely until we do so. When we can see the truth in this, then we can let go of our need to be right, to be heard, to win. We can accept the path we are on with a new perspective which does not allow blaming others to become our only tool. We stop seeing our problems as being the only ones that matter, stepping on others to be heard. We begin to change our behaviour as we take responsibility for our mistakes, learning as we do.
Last night while watching a show, realization hit me, surprising me because I was working on an art project while watching the show, so was really only half involved in what was happening. A woman had been held captive, was being tortured for information in this part of the story. The police arrived arrested the woman doing the torture, killed her accomplice and set the captive free. What surprised me and what actually gave me the insight, was the captive took up the hot iron which had been used to burn her and before anyone could react, used it against the woman who tortured her with it. She had that small window of opportunity to fight back, not become a victim for the rest of her life. I’m not saying she would not be affected by what happened to her, but she took the opportunity to show her abuser she didn’t win. In that moment she had been able to remain herself and was given the chance to prove it.
This was the big ahha moment for me as I realized I have never been given the opportunity to accuse or blame those who hurt me. I never had an opportunity to fight back in a way which allowed me to remain who I was as a child, instead forced to hide inside myself because I was surrounded by people who hated everything I represented. There has never been a way for me to lash out with the anger or fear they instilled in me to have release, to get closure – suppression has been my only option. There is no physical person to name, no single act I can prove to justify the truth, so still forced to remain silent, invisible. Everything is just fragments, still so many missing pieces, so many holes which can’t be filled. There is just no relief from the constant questions which can’t be answered, the story which can’t be shared in a way which brings closure. There is no way to put it back on the shelf and hope it goes away because the triggers are a constant reminder. You cannot have severe PTSD without severe trauma and with it never goes away. At least now there is understanding for those triggers.
The longer I’m here, in Canada, the more I feel the impossibility of success in getting what I need in order to have closure. The road has brought me to a place where everything sacrificed was in vain and the inevitable acceptance of this truth. My children abandoned me, I have no family, Mali is gone – I am alone with my pain and sorrow as I have learned there is no one strong enough to help me carry this burden in the way I need them to.
Being alone is the answer, I understand this now. There can be no formal closure for this story as long as I cannot prove it because there is no one who understands why it is important. It is not about what I went through, it is why I had to and this seems to escape everyone I speak to. I don’t want sympathy, my story means nothing if no one understands the why of it. I want people to see the truth and how what happened was part of creating the world we live in today. If that can ever happen, then I wish to go back into hiding, live my life in peace knowing I accomplished what I promised to do. Yet making peace with knowing I will most likely never attain what I have struggled to reach is where I am today. Letting go of the hope I can return home – the impossibility has become the reality. Lost at sea, no markers to guide me, I surrender……
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