Processing the nightmare

 I've started to be able to look back and process and understand things in a way I couldn't before. 

Part of this is years of trauma therapy - which has helped me understand how my own previous experiences and paradigms influenced how I received the systematic devaluation, destabilization, privacy invasion, and abuse of a covert intelligence agency; and to integrate those experiences into a cohesive whole.  I've also been able to stop blaming myself for what happened, and to start to hold compassion for the person I was - the constant terror and uncertainty I experienced, the love and the need to protect. 

Another part is time. I needed to get enough distance from those events, enough sense of myself, enough maturing and emotional growth to be able to handle the magnitude of what had happened without having it destroy me. 

A third part is understanding. This was a matter of experience - of being able to observe and know how people and organizations function, of being able to do research (insofar as anyone outside of clandestine organizations can peer into them), of coming to an understanding of the tactics and procedures, and the mind-numbing bureaucracy. Like any other bureaucracy, this one functions in an impersonal, process driven way that tamps down individual agency and expression, and demands adherence to institutional culture and rules at the cost of one's soul. But, unlike other organizations which may have dishonest players within the instiution, clandestine groups have dishonesty as its backbone. Its operators are trained to view relationships transactionally, to detach and distance themselves, to lie and create whatever manipulation is expedient for the circumstance. 

Over this past weekend, on a flight, I watched the first three episodes of the television series, "The Agency" with Michael Fassbender. I found it both deeply troubling and a profound relief. 

For years, my mental map of the organization that had harmed me was a nebulous shadow - its outlines defined by what I'd observed, documented, and understood from their treatment of me and you. It was always difficult to know how much of what happened to us - and what they did to me - was the result of your choice, and how much was an institutional decision. 

Seeing the depiction of covert operations on the screen was a validation of my personal records. It also helped fill in the blanks for me in a way I've never been able to achieve before now. 

In the days since I've watched that, so many feelings have risen to the surface - memories of you and me. And us. The things you told me, the fear you lived inside. And my own fear. God, I was terrified. For years. And even now, as I look back over the past decade of living in the Netherlands, I marvel at my own boldness - and am hardly surprised that I've continued to live in a baseline of fear in all that time. 

I wish I had lived a different life. I wish they hadn't attacked me. I wish you had been kinder. More ethical. I wish you had defended me against them. I wish you had chosen me, and left that life behind. 

But I also understand that there was no way they would have let me be with you. Even if I hadn't made such an almighty stink. The problem was never me. It was your disobedience. 

But I certainly was problematic for them, wasn't I? I was a physicist, an analyst, a professional. I cared deeply about the mission. And I loved you truly and profoundly. And I needed to protect you. I saw what they were doing. And I was never supposed to see. I filed complaints with MIVD, with the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and I talked to an Dutch Inspector General. I reported to NCIS and my chain of command. I put my records with a human righs lawyer, and filed a criminal complaint in the Italian court. And, afterwards, when they tried to discredit me, I refused to step into the "Crazy Bitch Box." 

And I continue to remember.

I know that there is nothing I can ever do to see you again. There is no god I can appease. There is no tribunal where I can receive justice or recompense for the suffering. I can never recover what they took from me.

But I can retain my evidence and my story. I never traded my soul or my birthright for that fucking mess of pottage. I kept a firm grip on it all.

And I pray for you. Not every day - but when I can. When the need for you still rushes up into me, and fills me with sadness. And every time I've ever walked into a church, I've always lit a candle for you. 

I love you, my darling. I always will.