,
20 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
1/ I have a story that may help you understand the full horror of what America is doing now. It is a very minor event in a very privileged life & the fact that it IS so minor & yet caused such lasting harm is the very point.
2/ When I was a toddler, I was hospitalized alone for a month in an army hospital with my leg in traction. I'd had complicated surgery to fix a congenital displaced hip discovered as I began trying to walk.
3/ I wasn't completely alone - my working mother visited every moment she wasn't working. My grandparents visited. My father was fighting in Vietnam, but I'm sure he asked for regular updates. The doctors and nurses were, I am sure, kind & attentive.
4/ The hospital was, I am sure, clean & comfortable. I have no actual visual memories of the event, merely photos & family recollections. It was one of those minor medical events that sometimes children have to go through & I was, fortunately, “too young to remember.”
5/ I was, however, severely traumatized by it. I was a child who for many years woke up from recurring nightmares of people vanishing suddenly, literally popping right out of existence in front of me, or disappearing as I turned away.
6/ I still occasionally have these nightmares at age 50. I was terrified of vacuum cleaners & would scream horribly if one was turned on or even brought into the room. I’m told it made a sound similar to a machine they used in the hospital.
7/ When I returned from the hospital, I’m told I was different. Previously, I’d been like any other adventurous toddler, eager for independence, crawling off to explore. When I came back, I was clingy, wanted to be held all the time, cried whenever my mother left the room.
8/ I grew up clingy & fearful, afraid for my mother to be parted from me for even a moment. I cried to be left at school. I cried during the day at school, which led to bullying & more crying.
9/ When it came time for college, despite excellent grades & the chance to go anywhere, I chose the public university nearest to home & even that small distance was enough to send me into a clinical depression.
10/ I grew into a clingy adult, terrified of abandonment, with all the relationship issues that creates. I married the first man that promised to never leave me and stayed with him through years of emotional & physical abuse.
11/ It took a decade of therapy before I could finally trace it all back to that brief period of being a small child, non-verbal, terrified & confused & alone at night in a strange place that caused me pain.
12/ So when I think of how my very minor separation, which wasn’t even a complete separation, & not in a bad place, affected me & shaped me, I weep for these children. To a child, the parents are her world.
13/ To be ripped from them, placed alone inside a dirty cage, not understanding why this is happening or whether the parents will return (& some may never return) is terrifying.
14/ These children, particularly the youngest who are too young to understand, are being re-shaped by this trauma & it will affect every moment of the rest of their lives. They may have no conscious memories of this experience, but every cell in their small bodies will remember.
15/ The older children, who may understand more, will nonetheless blame themselves, thinking they did something to cause their parents to leave them.
16/ If reunited (sadly, that’s still an ‘if”), they will be angry at their parents, angry at themselves, afraid to reattach, permanently emotionally scarred.
17/ The physical deprivations & traumas we’ve heard about in the last few days & which we focus on because they are most visible - the lack of food & soap & beds & room to move about - as horrible as they are - are not what will cause the most injury.
18/ Once safe, the children will recover from those abuses. It’s the separation itself. Their emotional scars will be the most lasting & deep. The terror, uncertainty, guilt, confusion, anxiety & overwhelming pain of abandonment they feel now will always be with them.
19/ Even if their young minds forget, their souls will remember to their very last breath. Childhood is the most powerful time in our lives. Our most important memories are distilled there & shape who we are, who we become.
20/ Our memories of that time, whether conscious or unconscious, create us completely. There is no such thing as “too young to remember.”
