The Vicissitudes of War

Methodology

Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts.

(Warren 2013 p275)

It is often considered that the most effective and objective means of researching the perplexing questions that the world has to offer comes in the form of quantitative acquisition. In the realms of the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) this form of data collection has little dispute to which methodology provides the most optimal answers.

Although empirical data highlights a generalised overview of the collective. It does little to reach into the intricacies of the individual experiencing. The researcher in this method of approach very much takes the position of the observer rather than the participant. The researcher therefore hides their own personal interpretations on the research subject/topic that they are establish to convey to the reader. The problem that arises with this is there exists the disparity of connection that can be made apparent to the reader. This subjective engagement with the topic of research also allows for the reader to identify with the emotional motivations of the writer.

However, the complexity of the arts (Music, Dance, Art and Literature) and the social sciences bring about the diminishing return of subjective understanding through the acquired knowledge of experiencing when quantitative data is praised as the bar of approach. Therefore, in the realm of the social sciences, a qualitative approach is adopted. Although this method of research is more subjective, the researcher still assumes an observer role and is detached from the research itself.

Autoethnography addresses the discrepancy that exists between the researcher and the subject matter. Ellingson and Ellis (2008) sees autoethnography as a social constructionist project that rejects the deep-rooted binary oppositions between the researcher and the researched, objectivity and subjectivity, process and product, self and others, art and science, and the personal and the political.

The personal investment in autoethnography reveals the to the reader subjective interpretations of lived experiences through the process of storytelling. It is the embracing of personal thoughts and emotions (with transparency) that engage in the yearning for connection as the reader.

Therefore, in keeping with this methodology, I aim to be at the forefront of the subject matter in relation to this paper. It is my aim that, the readers of the following paper will identify with over-arching themes for which I am attempting to convey.

Through the methodology of autoethnography, I relinquish my thoughts and fears of self-preservation to evoke the most sought-after goal that has been the process of writing this paper. Human connection.

The Vicissitudes of War

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?

(Gandhi 1960 p59)

1962. The sound of thunderous roars filled the skies as American C-123 aircrafts littered the green pastures of North Vietnam with shades of crimson reflecting that of the setting sun.

A cacophony of cries from Vietnamese civilians echoed into eternity as weapons of war bombarded indiscriminately hostile and non-hostile grounds. The codes of humanitarian ethics and the Socio-political impact had been disregarded by the occupiers of my birthplace; through the reasoning of hampering their elusive enemy, The Viet Cong.

The American soldiers brought with them a self-righteousness in their crusade to cease the expansion of a conflicting ideology of Communism through the means of overwhelming brutality backed by impunity.

The border between the north and south was all that kept the GIs from distinguishing friend from foe. The value of life was measured by the political beliefs of the individual. If this belief was held in opposition by anyone, those lives were forfeit.

For ten long years, the American war machine toiled to get a foothold against the adversary. Within that time, the voices of the people in ‘The Land of the Free’ grew loud and restless, protesting against what appeared to be an unrelenting war. Perhaps it was, that the people recognised the hypocrisy that existed in the American principles of freedom by intervening in the affairs of another nation that contrasted their own political philosophies. Or perhaps, the realisation dawned that nothing was worth the cascade of suffering endured by both sides.

So, in January 1973, The United States relented and withdrew their forces; leaving behind millions of casualties, and cementing the conditions for the plight that the next generation would face.

Numerous books and documents outline the adverse ramifications of war on the human condition (Lopez et al. 2005, Baingana et al. 2005, Green et al. 2003) as well as the domino effect it has on the world economy (Howell 2011). ‘Studies have shown that conflict situations cause more mortality and disability than any major disease…’ (Murthy & Lakshminarayana 2006 p25).

War takes from us all, but provides little in compensation. The currency for everyone directly or in-directly involved will forever be suffering.

Only the dead know peace, whereas the living bear its many heavy burdens.

The Tapestry of Fate

If war, famine and disease are the means to destroy the body. It is however, people that damages our hearts and minds.

I was born in the winter of 1985; in the rubble city that was once Hanoi. I recall the words of my mother – grief stricken as she bared witness to the news that her first born had been cursed with a condition. An endemic disability (Spina-Bifida) that was found to be caused by the use of the infamous Agent Orange (Chou 2017). “I held you with tears in my eyes, because I knew that the world was not going to accept you” my mother once told me.

It is difficult for me to recall when it was that my mother lost her quiet strength, or her incorrigible love for me. She held her resolve in protecting her child after the insistence of my grandmother to abandon me because she could not bear the cultural shame of the first-born grandson being an invalid. As if my existence robbed them of the overdue happiness that they were owed.

I felt the pained determination in my mother’s eyes as she recalled the overcrowded sinking boat, we fled Vietnam in to seek asylum in Hong Kong:

“I felt death was coming for us. Everyone could see their end. And yet, you, by nature, often crying since the day I kept you, were silent and serene throughout the whole ordeal.”

I reflect on this passage of time often. I have contemplated whether it was by no coincidence that I am calm at the precipice of demise. Rather, the familiar lullabies of death and fear have forever been by my side like a comforting Siren’s song.

Somehow, my mother overcame so many obstacles to preserve my life with the will that only a mother possesses. The accounts of all the anguish she had to endure during the war; the misfortune of her child being born with a disability and the cultural shame inherited by it. As if she were deficient to be a mother, or to bear a child. And yet, she fell victim to the narrative that my grandmother had planted; one of the many narratives that my father reinforced all throughout my adolescence. I was, to them, an omen of ill fate, and a reminder that even long after the withdrawal of the Americans, they were still subjected to a future of burden and suffering.

It is a far-cry to call my father a mild-mannered man. This was merely the persona for which he adopted in the presence of people he was unfamiliar with. Distilled within him were generations of hatred and anger. Hate he had long harboured and inherited through many unsubdued generations of trauma, tempered by the hammer of war. Therefore, he felt it was his twisted sense of duty to impart this long-lasting tradition on the personification of shame that he felt.

My father was taught that obedience and respect was achieved through totalitarian control - reinforced by fear. A lesson he had studied first-hand from my grandparents, as they had learned from theirs.

It was meaningless to him that my physical frailty as a child could endure little of his barbarism. If anything, it spurred him on. He felt such a disdain that a meek and meagre son was born of his own flesh and blood.

I was always a stranger to his thoughts. I had more familiarity with every jagged step that he kicked me down; ending at the solid wall that was my relief - than that of any reasoning behind his torment. I have a catalogue of vivid memories of all the atrocities he enacted that haunt me in my nightmares; finely edited into an agonising motion picture. But it is not the sharp cracking of his belt as the corner of the buckle etched itself on my skull. Nor the rough hand whipping across my face because I had given an incorrect answer to a math question that make me turn restlessly in my attempts to sleep. It is the still image of my mother, empty and apathetic as I crawled towards her, bloodied and screaming for solace. Even now, I am helpless to fight back the tears that come with this very vision…

Love as the Agency for Healing

If it is true to say that I am an anathema in the eyes of my parents, then to my foster mother, I was her benediction.

My father attempted to instil within me, a racially prejudiced perspective for which he coined the phrase “the lying white people”. He often repeated this like a mantra that held an inarguable truth in his frequent slur filled tangents. It is not hard to see however where this mentality stemmed from. A generation of harbouring hatred for the enemy that destroyed the livelihood of millions, and the distinguishing feature that they all shared were the colour of their skin. Therefore, it was poetic irony that the only glimpse of parental love I felt was provided by a person vastly contrasting in complexion than that of himself, and representative of all that he abhorred.

Mary Ainsworth (1969) stresses the necessity of the mother-child relationship that contribute to the healthy development of the infant. A secure base to which one may feel the courage to explore the world with certainty that there will be comfort to return to. My foster mother was exactly that.

Sue was to me, all that I longed my mother to be. Her affections came with no agenda, nor was it wavered by fear of consequence if she were to undermine my father’s senseless violence. I felt the soft hand that comforted me through my tears; the warm embrace of acceptance that was found wanting from those that brought me into this world. She had it all in abundance.

I could feel the years before washing away by merely being in her presence. It is impossible to deny, that without her intervention in such a crucial time in my life, I could not have reaped the potential to be more than merely the lame dog my father brandished me as. However brief the time may have been.

Sue never had the privilege of bearing a child of her own. Her body was incapable of doing so. Yet, she possessed all the attributes necessary to be more than the ‘Good enough mother…’ (Winnicott 1953 p10). She is, and always will be, perfectly imperfect in the eyes of my inner child.

It was then so much more tragic, that the institution that was socially constructed to protect me (and many others like myself) from harm was deceived into returning me to my tormentors once more. Even despite my cries of protest, or the inexcusable evidence that my body provided all courtesy of my parents’ hatred. All the while, the mother that had my heart was away and could not fight for her right to keep me.

For several more years I endured the mental and physical strain of my parents’ unrelenting punishment: “Did you really think you could get away from me?! No one wants to take a child that’s a cripple!” My father once said with a sadistic smile across his face.

I did: I held hope that I had finally found freedom from his tyrannical vice. I continued to hold hope for years more that I may be rescued by my true mother. But it never came.

Eventually, I succumbed to his hate and internalised his voice as if it were my own. A voice that chastised me in my every decision. I had been forcefully indoctrinated into the inter-generational trauma covered in the guise of culture that many members in my family before me had been accustomed to. I also harboured anger and hate for the world that cared little to hear my shrill voice, and for the carcass of a human being that I represented to myself.

I could not bear the burden of the voices belittling me any longer, to which I chose what I had hoped to be the hand of death’s embrace.

Purpose through Meaning

“Do you wish for death so much that you wish to be free from living? Or is it that you wish to be free from yourself?”

Paul was the only therapist I have ever met who persevered through my lapses of dissociation. Even when he recognised the soulless look in my eyes as I often fixated on an empty space in a room, blinking infrequently. He never gave up hope that there was some small chance his words would seep into the chambers of my mind.

I have never met another therapist since that possessed patience for such an infuriating patient. Or such an infuriatingly stubborn therapist that would not allow me to retreat to the sanctuary of my mind. At least, that is what I felt at the time.

By this point of my life, I had constructed an inner world of safety. One for which I thought impenetrable. The walls for which I had erected were bricked with animosity and cemented together with a limitless supply of hate. A dark veneer of malice, tarred and coated the exterior to ward off all those contemplating coming close. This was what I projected to the world. Yet, behind the façade of unrelenting resentment guarded the broken whimpering child within. Unheard, untouched and unwanted. Encased in darkness and separated from the young adult I had become.

I was nothing more than a dog. A lame one at that. It was my identity. One I accepted and which was validated by the several foster families I was frequently exchanged hands with throughout my teens like an animal that held only monetary value. I merely perpetuated and brought this narrative into existence through the interpretations of my experiences. A narrative that kept me in the loop of self-loathing that I had little interest in dissipating.

Even the love Sue provided could no longer penetrate my inner world. She came too late, I felt. A failed suicide attempt and countless foster families conditioned me to believe that love and acceptance were fleeting opportunities only afforded to me once. By the time I finally found myself at her door once more (7 years after our initial meeting), I had grown jaded and bitter. Life had taught me that love was a finite resource provided to those who fitted the right conditions, and those conditions were a matter of chance.

Despite all of her efforts to pull close the child she once held, she could not comprehend the disparity between the person I once was, and the person I had then become. I had waited several insufferable years for her return. But it was a different me that returned to her; broken and beaten. I no longer resembled any trace of the optimistic child I once was.

I had mastered the ability to hurt others before they could fathom the means to hurt or abandon me first. I was misery personified; and I longed for company that would weep to bring me comfort. This I inflicted on everyone, even those I held dear.

As Neitzsche and Kaufmann (1989 p146) once so aptly put; ‘He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.’

The remorse I feel to this very day does little to alleviate the burden of guilt that has weighed heavily on my heart from the cruel acts I have had others suffer through. Perhaps it was, by some small twisted measure, I wanted others to feel the hurt I felt, and experience the pain I had long endured, as a way of having connection to them; all due to the fact my suffering voice had gone unheard since the beginning of my existence. This guilt, and the conception of my conscience would have never been discovered were it not for the intervention of Paul my therapist:

“Death is easy Paul. I’ve experienced and tasted it. It’s freedom. Living is the hard part. Living with myself and who I am.”

“Who you are is dictated by you. No one else. Your parents don’t get to tell you who you are or who you wish to become. You do that. You aren’t your disability, unless you choose it”.

“And how do I do that if I don’t even know who I am other than what I’ve been told?”

“By giving what you’ve experienced meaning. To give yourself and everything you’ve endured a voice. And in doing so, you’ll also find purpose”.

The Condemnation of Freedom

Man is condemned to be free…

(Sartre 2007 p5)

I have often battled with the Existential perspective that is Condemnation and Freedom. The mere use of the two concepts in the same sentence suggest opposing philosophical ideas. To be condemned would suggest that one is confined and constrained to forces outside the control of the individual. To relinquish our lives to the will of the fates.

However, if we consider the full context of Sartre’s existential perspective, he concludes that ‘Existence precedes Essence…’ (2007 p3). This allows for one’s perspective of the ‘essence’ we bring into life’s experiences. The essence (meaning) therefore can only be determined by our subjective translation of those experiences. Whether we choose to construe those experiences in such a way that condemn us is within our power to fulfil as a prophecy of our own creation. It is then, within the choice and our pursuit of meaning, do we find the freedom that exists within ourselves.

This ideology however, is not one for which can be casually acknowledged. It is from my experience that one must first come to terms with the condemnation of one’s existence first. In order to be free, we must concede that there exist the shackles that prevent us from our ultimate freedom. Or as to accept the perspective that ‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering…’ (Benvenga 1998 p63).

My condemnation came before the conception of my physical being, and for many, their condemnation is their existence. Condemnation is the subjective experiencing of one’s perspective of the world. One may feel the grasp of condemnation through insufferable circumstances outside their control: war, disability, loss, rape, abuse, disease. These events can come without the influence or choice of the individual, and can leave us feeling powerless, or in my case; lost.

It would have been all too easy for me to interpret my experiences that was destined for sadness. Were it not for the comfort of those who held me, I believe I would have found it difficult to see otherwise. However, through the intervention of my therapist, Paul, I recognised that what resided in me was agency for change. In my pursuit of meaning, I have also found purpose in the atrocities I have experienced, and that of my very existence; and with it, the very reason for which I endeavoured to become a therapist.

The Language of Vulnerability

I have come to recognise that the life I have lived thus far has armed me with skills that are difficult to acquire. To see the world through the lens of my disability means to never take for granted the small details of my surroundings. Every unkempt path is traversed differently under the labour of my turning wheels versus the brisk ease of those who are capable of taking a step. But I no longer begrudge those who are born with such an unconsidered privilege. Instead, I recognise the strength of mind and will to have overcome many obstacles that have come to develop my character. I cherish the deep emotional attunement I have cultivated by having endured and survived more than my share of turmoil and, with it, I understand thoroughly the process through which healing can be obtained.

Powers (2017) express the necessity that vulnerability has on the therapeutic relationship from both the client and the counsellor alike. Vulnerability comes from the acknowledgment and acceptance of the turmoil life has provided, and to reveal this through the means of cultivated empathy.

It is my belief that residing in all of us, is the child we often neglect to hear the shrill voice of. The duty that comes to ourselves is to comprehend the unheard voice of that child. To hear them in all of their pain and anguish that has accumulated from the hard battles fought that comes from living.

I have sat with my inner child, the one for which I purposely enclosed in the dark chambers of my heart in order to avoid hearing the pain he had to express to me. It was within my disillusion to believe that in doing so, it would forcibly allow the shell of who I am to be impenetrable from the slings and arrows of life’s armoury. However, it did just that. It kept me as a shell; lifeless and empty. Devoid of the emotion that would allow me to recognise the gift that life had to offer from feeling. So, I began clawing desperately at the walls I had erected in order to hear him. To hear his eternal cries of help. To accept that he is, and has always been, a part of me. To teach ourselves how to express to each other the words we long forgot how to speak.

And to hold him close and tell him; I am sorry…

He is my vulnerability. He taught me the language for which I use in my work with my clients; to recognise the practiced smile that hides the wrenching heart, and the stuttering nuance of measured words. This is the precious gift I was provided from true acceptance of my vulnerability.

The deep emotional connection with myself, contribute to the ‘Emotional Depth’ (Mearns & Cooper 2005 p183) which I strive to achieve by working relationally with my clients.

“John. I hear the words of despair and sadness. But I see the face of indifference. I wonder whether if you can accept the sadness that I feel for you in this very moment, that you might, in turn, feel that sadness for yourself, to then find yourself truly seen and heard.”

In the acceptance of all facets of myself, I can too then accept all spectrums of emotions in that of my client; without hypocrisy and of genuine engagement without my own personal agenda. Despite the incessant message given forth by my life experiences regarding my disability; I have come to prevail and integrate this into my core being as a person, and as a therapist.

The necessity of congruence in achieving relational depth inherently starts with the therapist. For myself, that comes with the acknowledgment of my presence through verbal and non-verbal cues.

My wheelchair is the physical representation of my vulnerability, and an unconscious invitation for my clients to access their existential selves. The tears I shed for my clients that are congruent and emotionally relevant within the here and now - are the emotional manifestations of my vulnerability. I give this, with no reservations when my inner child deems it appropriate.

Relationship stands at the forefront of everything we do. Whether this be reflected in the people we choose to have in our lives, or the relationship we have with ourselves. These are all projections for which signify our mental health state at any given point in one’s life.

Relationship therefore, is the pillar for which I recognise is integral to the work I do with my clients. There can be no healing, no trust, no relinquishing of the pain and sorrows that has burrowed deep in the veins of the wounded, without the antidote of all these woes that come from relationship.

The Resolve of Freedom

I have lived my life with the faith that God has watched over me. It has served for many purposes, including the belief that retribution will come on the day of eternal judgement.

Yet, if it is, that I find at the end of my days that God never existed, I shall be content with the knowledge that I persevered through hell, and forged through the fires of life to create the closest to heaven I could.

For that is the resolve of my freedom.

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