Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Aujourd'hui 09:09

The great murder mystery: on being numb

On my way to Panorama last week, I walked with three whole friends along busy Jerningham Avenue. Rock-star parking. Sometimes known as very-tiny-car parking. This spot is so near to the Savannah you can see the street vendors, the tinsel on the pan racks – and someone just tried to sell me water. “Don’t make a sound, just give me all your money.” The hand around my neck is cool and soft but firm. I don’t even break my stride, let alone run or pull away or scream. A laugh follows, the hand slips away and the person who steps in front of me is a friend I have not seen in a while. Maybe there was a time when it would have been amusing (if childish at our age), and jokes would ensue about how easy it is to scare me, or how the faux bandit-friend could leave their day job and take up a life of crime. This is not that time. It has not been that time in ages. I worry about my lack of reaction. Every day there is serious, often fatal crime on which to report. How often are there no witnesses? Truly, not just what is reported? There is also no shortage of things you can read about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), or who might need help with it. Survivors of every kind of abuse, people who have seen active combat, witnesses of the things that end up as headlines. Witnesses. I have never seen an active shooting, stabbing, chopping or slaying by any means, and still I am sort of a forced witness because of what I read or hear. We all are. The country is too small to feel that anyone is unaffected. But back to witnesses. When we think of the necessary care for those who have looked upon the terrible, are we only thinking of an immediate group? I fear this is so. Let’s take a busy place like Ariapita Avenue. Let’s say someone is attacked there and maybe goes to the hospital, or maybe dies on the pavement. If people come forward to say they saw how it went down, they are witnesses. But there were other people there. So many more than the few from whom information will be taken. There is the crowd that was liming near the site of the event. There are residents with windows. There are people of all ages and ways of life and they have seen or heard part of something that turns out to be a murder. How numb are we – or how numb do we think we are – that we don’t think of all the people who are now part of the story and its fallout, simply because they were looking for a gyro? For some people, the close-up witnessing of violence is an everyday occurrence. Some think of them as people who live in hot spots or bad neighbourhoods. Maybe they think of themselves that way too, but their distress is no smaller for the fact. And if you live in such a place, what’s happening to you, to your mind, is unspeakable. Every day. I don’t know if you can grow accustomed to that. Or hardened. Nor do I think it’s as straightforward as: you either become the violence or a victim. There are so many degrees in between, and the thing they have in common is survival. And what would we not do to survive? We, the headline-readers, have become or are becoming numb. This is no more about this group than it is about those doing or seeing killing on the regular. This is about the circle standing just outside, but still aware of what’s going on. I’m afraid of a world that is only capable of seeing one side or the other. If we believe that violence breeds violence, then those who think they stand at a safe distance will imagine that everyone who is not safe is in fact dangerous. The neighbours of criminals in the bad areas are not cast in the light of innocence. They are just people from the bad place. Ergo, they are the threat. And we don’t go looking for all the walking wounded who have simply seen too much. One day someone you know will be on, say, the Avenue, and they will see something they can’t cope with. You will care then. That person was not from a bad place. The gyro is not to blame. Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition. The post The great murder mystery: on being numb appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.