Triggered (2).

So, this is how it goes:

On Sunday I watch a Spanish TV show about the ordeal Captain Zaida Cantera went through when she was sexually abused by her superior. My past lives were almost a distant memory until I sat down in front of the telly and listened to her, especially the things she didn’t say and were implied in her silence but you could read in her eyes. As in other occasions, I felt the shift of energy in my body, and from that moment on I may have looked like my 4-year-old brother hiding behind a cushion when he used to watch the videoclip “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. My heart sank. It does every time I think about it, so I try not to think. I was about to get up and tell my partner I didn’t bear to watch anymore, but I did, until the end.

Though her situation was very similar to mine during WWII, my emotions mainly came from my Black Widow life. Katrina’s life was short, and sexual abuse was only part of the problem. I think the wounds don’t go too deep. The Black Widow is different. It is a longer life, or death in life, where much was destroyed. I felt identified with a lot of things Zaida was saying. One, that you just can’t believe it is happening when it happens. Her case began when her lieutenant-colonel called her “secretary” and tried to caress her thigh, in front of a few witnesses. This brought me memories of Katrina, but the rest was from a wife who suddenly was slapped on the face by her husband for talking with common friends. I once mentioned how much I liked the word “soul-killing” one of my forum companions had used. Well, that single second, unimportant as it may seem (after all, how many slaps on the face we experience when we are kids and we don’t remember?), is soul-killing. And while you are living it, you know your soul is breaking, and that moment is being deeply ingrained in your memory. Another thing I felt very identified with, was the silence of her coworkers. Thankfully, some of them were brave enough to testify at the trial, but most witnesses, fearful of reprisals and their military careers being cut short, chose to turn their backs on her and remain silent. I had to live through it all, and that is what still infuriates me: the silence, the hiding, the isolation... the agony.  

Well, I went to bed and on Monday I was still quite angry so I did some exercise and tried to keep my mind occupied with my daily routines. Then on Tuesday night I meditated. I felt intense emotions and two or three flashes came, nothing important. Still half “in trance” I did some research, I found my first house in Google Street View, I read my last words on the newspaper clip, and while I was going through another piece of information which said I managed to escape a few days before my execution with someone’s help, I saw myself taking someone’s hand and going through a window. I felt that piece of information was right, though I still had no memories of that escape. Then another link did mention I escaped through a window... and I don’t remember to have read it before, so it might have been an instant verification.

I know I am blocking memories though. Sometimes I even doubt I did kill the man that brought me to my death. I would believe my own words if I didn’t know how twisted I had become, how much poison I carried myself in my heart and how dark my soul was at that point, unable to cope with the misery and suffering a man’s hand had inflicted upon me. Perhaps I am blocking those memories because I know it’s better to have someone to blame than acknowledge it was me who didn’t (or couldn’t) find the way out of the hole I had fallen into.

The injustice and impunity that prevail even today in Zaida’s case is the same that prevailed back then, and that is my main issue. However, this morning I was wondering if that only reflects my ongoing desires of vengeance, as I use to say to people who seek justice. Maybe I was sick with desires of vengeance back then? The answer was “No. That may be true or not, but we have to keep something in mind: we all know justice is human, BUT there must be justice while we are here”. While I was trying to sleep these words —pronounced by a male voice, as if I heard someone saying them— slipped into my mind: “She had it coming”. Well, if I had it coming, I wonder: What should these men have coming? What do they deserve? Do they have to go unpunished while innocent women keep living broken lives?

Not even my past reincarnation as a judge can answer these questions...