Building On Trauma 5

No one else is going to do it.  This is what I keep having to tell myself sometimes.  This is probably a familiar mantra for most trauma survivors, individual and collective.  Rome wasn't built in a day and Rome was built by trauma survivors.  So was Athens.  So was Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital.  No one can go through life without experiencing trauma and its effects. 

Whether we are starting our lives over or building a new civilization, nothing gets done if we just wait wallowing in our misery and pain while no one else does the work for us.  It has to get done.  No one else is going to do it.

The emerging people of Latin America, a curious melting pot of Spanish, European, Indigenous and African origins, did not wait till they were feeling well and better for the culture and nations of Latin America to evolve and develope.  They kept working at it because they had to.  It was a shaky foundation, yes, but they could not just sit there on the ground and wait till they were feeling better.  They had to survive.  They needed food, shelter, clothing, work and only they were going to provide those things for themselves.

I don't think that healing and recovery from trauma ever really begins to happen until the trauma survivor or survivors actually do get moving on something.  Not waiting to feel better but working at improving our lives and our situations, no matter how limited our resources.  It isn't a magic bullet.  There's no such thing as a magic bullet.  The fruits of our labours are still going to be fundamentally flawed and defective.

Having in many ways had to rebuild my life almost from scratch, I know what this is like.  I have been gainfully employed now for the last fifteen years, which is a success.  I have not been able to secure work that pays a decent living wage.  A failure.  I am securely housed in a decent apartment.  Success.  I live in a government subsidized building where forty percent of the tenants are mental health consumers.  Failure.  I am able to travel for at least a month in Latin America every year.  Success.  I have to live like a pauper the other eleven months of the year to survive and save money for said vacations.  Failure.  I am flourishing as an artist.  Success.  I sell maybe one original work of art maybe every two or three years now.  Failure.  I feel stronger, happier and more confident than ever.  Success.  I am still at times overwhelmed with crippling anxiety and self-hatred.  Failure.

And on it goes.

In Latin America, your will find flourishing cultures: indigenous, Afro-Caribbean, Mestizo and Colonial.  The art, music and literature of Latin America has attracted world renown as well as the natural beauty and wonder of the Amazon, the Andes and Patagonia.  Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and till just this year, Colombia, have been hijacked by murderous drug wars and recent civil wars leaving hundreds of thousands dead.  The legacy of brutal military dictatorships, nominally democratic governments hobbled by neoliberal capitalism and archaic and oppressive Stalinist style Marxism still casts a shadow over the many democratic and human rights progress.

My life is built on trauma and my progress is going to be uneven.  The nations of Latin America are all built on trauma and their progress is going to be uneven.  But we are making progress.  Sort of, as we keep trying to stagger our way forward, after falling down, getting up then falling down again.