Los Desaparecidos
- Pätrick K
- Dec 11, 2019
- 5 min read
Within my individual therapy sessions, we have been circling back to the topic of Los Desaparecidos. I was sheltered and unfamiliar to the topic, however, it is a term (‘the disappeared’) eluding to prisoners of the Argentian government. More on this topic here . The topic came up while talking about my close family relations and history...processing emotional distance, loss, grief, and proxy topics.
I have a background from my youth of passing through the foster care system. We briefly have talked about the idea of being one place for a period of time that maintained a daily stress of not knowing if you were returning to the same place at the end of the night...what it’s like to pass to the next house and never hear from the people again...the process of wondering what, if anything you meant in the process...feeling disposable...who fills the vacancy that leaving just created...the inability to focus on those relationships because the threat of not having basic human needs is very present...where will you sleep, for how long, where is the next meal, how long can you be somewhere before the stay is unwelcomed, where will you be free to shower, what material things are worth bringing along and identifying a safe place on where to store them in case you don’t get to come back. (I actually still fight the urge to bury things in areas I know I can come back to if I need to and dig them up...twenty years later, and this survival skill is still present with me within the comfort of having a permanent family figure in my life. *eye roll at myself*)
I remember overhearing a case worker once say that ‘[the foster system is just growing kids like bromeliads, no soil, no root]’. I think this is why I also struggle. Not because of this statement, but that feeling of you never know when or if there is going to be the next ambush in life, and you will be railroaded to detach yourself of any emotion because survival mode will take over. You don’t want to feel like you are surviving, or going through the motions, you want to LIVE through them. Which creates a level of sadness at times to JUST.NOT.BE.ABLE.TO.RELAX despite knowing Caleb confirmed a lot of our ‘root growth’...he wants me to feel safe and secure in that area of life...but I am doing my best in the last few months to sink my ‘roots’...thought identifying this head-on is a challenging thing to process together. Why can’t he be fully the exception to my past contrary experiences??? The problem comes from me, and not identifying honestly together where my needs are to see this outlook change...fearing if I identify individual self needs, I will just be ‘passed on’...or upgraded away from to the next stand-in...leaving me discarded. (‘Collective present communication’, amirite?!?!?!) We have spent almost a full session talking about it in reverse though, not as the person disappearing, but as to the people who have disappeared from me. Sometimes I look at these alterations in relationships as ‘victim to the circumstance’... not identifying the other individual as freely causing emotional harm, do my best to limit the emotional blame that I deserve the situation, but in application, it does tend to come down to ‘these set of circumstances controlled the other person to do what they did, despite not necessarily wanting to, and it’s my fault for [x] reason’. The conversation emerged when identifying how there are cultural responses to how to deal with the death of a person or when people move further distances apart or (some third thing I can’t remember at the moment...but we talked about it). Specifically, we talked about a death of a loved one, community members and friends schedule times to come and sit with the surviving person(s), bring food to make sure they are eating, just are present to know they are loved and not alone.
We jumped to Los Desaparecidos as a means to identify a cultural vacuum on how to experience emotional loss. It was explained to me how, people would disappear in the middle of the day or night, and not come home (which is another worry I have with Caleb during those moments of ‘he’s late and there’s no notice). Left behind family would not be able to confirm if they are dead, but with the state of the society, there was a likelihood of knowing they were alive and detained. The challenge was knowing the loved one was alive and that all connection was blacked out (even in prisons, communication is available to help process change in family dynamics).
People have to stand still, knowing their loved one still existed in this world but occupying a separate space simultaneously. How, when, or if these changes can be made take many folds to the issue. To outsiders, the idea of grief or need for compassionate support does not weigh as heavily. The people left behind then take to vigils, or protests, or hiring detectives, or their own means to find ways to trace and find answers to the abrupt loss. This is seen, to many in the community, as a sign they have direction and purpose...lesser-seen as the desperation to connect untold answers.
Interesting, highlight...but I get it. It would be fair to say I have been discarded in a few stages of evolution, yes. It’s not something I just created, made up, or chose for myself. Talking about the situations as it were the people were removed from me, and I was the (theoretical) stationary one in the situation has been an interesting reframe. Outlining the lack of a cultural response to broken and unprocessed emotional connections separated by circumstance has been ...well...weird. Weird in the context you feel like there is the ability to change the context, but an impossible entity around it...maybe this is the mental health side of this issue, the exhaustion of looking at ‘how do I I reach out and change the narrative for the grief we don’t need to have?’ The paralysis in not knowing where to start, or when started, ‘am I doing it wrong/is this not the correct way’, and that is where I am on this topic when I think of some important people in my life...they luckily exist in their own silos at present...but how do I get to meet them somewhere on the field. I am willing to walk further and cover more ground.
...but what happens when I cover more ground, walk to meet who I am looking for, and just stand there...present...as me...???
...clearly this will be a topic that comes up in session again...what do you do with difficult retrievable connections?
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