“When a trauma is of human origin and is intentionally inflicted, it not only shatters one’s fundamental assumptions about the world and one’s safety in it, but also severs the sustaining connection between the self and the rest of humanity.”
At 5 a.m. this morning, awakened by the sound of sirens passing by the window of my London flat, I was reminded of this quote from an article I read for my Spanish class this past spring. Lying in bed, my sweat-soaked shirt sticking to the white linen of my sheets, I refreshed the BBC Live Update about the June 3 London terror attacks and glanced over an eye-witness report:
There were people running out of the bar across the road. Then a guy ran up to me with a massive knife. He stared at me realising he wasn't getting in.
Though this man wasn’t harmed and remained safe within a pub in Borough Market until evacuated by armed police, he too has experienced a human-inflicted trauma that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Brendan looked into the eyes of a murderer who held a 10-inch, blood-stained knife, the only thing between them a thin sheet of glass and a locked storefront door.
Terrorist attacks and news reports of mercilessly slaughtered civilians have a chilling effect on everyone in the city, in the country, and in the world. They remind us of the hatred and the cold-blooded savagery that exists, endangering our safety that we so often take for granted. These events serve as cautionary notes to the public to stay vigilant and mindful of others.
But what always bothers me is how the survivors face the crippling physical and psychological effects of bearing witness to such an attack. They are victims themselves--not with severed necks but severed connections to humanity. How could you be expected to trust again? To feel safe on the streets of London, on the Tube, within the walls of your own home?
It could’ve very easily been me in Brendan’s place last night. It could’ve been any one of my friends, who had arrived at my flat mere minutes after the first report of an attack had come through. At 10:08 p.m., we decided to stay put, only knowing then that a van had run into pedestrians on the London Bridge. It sends a shiver through my body to think how close we were--and how much closer we could have been--to the horror in Borough Market and on London Bridge had we gone to a nearby bar as planned.
I sank low under my bed sheets when I finally turned in for the night, having received the message that my friends were safely home. At 2:15 a.m. with the window cracked and the curtains open, I began to imagine that one of the attackers would be attracted to the illumination of my phone screen on the fourth floor of our building. Would I too come face-to-face with a man holding a 10-inch blade at my bedroom window? Paranoia raked my thoughts. Sirens continued to blare. He wasn’t getting in. He couldn’t.
Today, I woke up in London with shattered assumptions of my safety in the world. But rather than let fear root me where I was, I stepped out onto the streets of a city that had been wounded by the events that had transpired the night before. Silence pervaded my Tube ride to the National Gallery, and I again thought about Brendan.
Where would he be now? Safe at home? Asleep? Or perhaps unable to sleep. The fragility of life resounds after such tragic events. As community members, it is our responsibility to care for the victim. We must help him to re-seal the frayed ends of his sense of self and of safety in what can be a scary, dangerous world. We must fight on to sustain the connections that exist between us all as human beings.