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The Last Taboo in Trauma: When Victim Becomes Victimizer
To Stop the Cycle of Trauma, We Have to Talk About Victims Who Victimize Other People
What I’m about to tell you, I haven’t told anyone. Well, my therapist, a couple of guys I served with, a few close friends — that’s it.
One day in Iraq, I tried to kill two men.
I spent almost 15 years tortured by the idea that that makes me evil. The reason I’m able to talk about it now is that I’ve spent that time working through the shame and I now know something that I didn’t know then: I’m not evil.
I have the capacity for evil and those are two different things.
That doesn’t mean you should forgive me, or the person who hurt you for that matter. That doesn’t mean I’m not ashamed and deservedly so. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t protect yourself from people like me.
But this capacity doesn’t make me evil, it makes me human, just like you.
They were riding in a white Bongo truck. I don’t know what they’re actually called but that’s what we called them — Bongo trucks. They’re all over Iraq. It’s like a van in the front and a pickup truck in the back with tiny, little skateboard wheels that make it look like a kid’s toy become real-sized.
