Ingrid Betancourt and the Jungle

A couple of days ago, I saw a Larry King interview with Ingrid Betancourt, one of the freed FARC hostages. I was shaken as I saw the trauma in her eyes and watched her try to manage the memories as they arose.

One thing that struck me was that, several times in the interview, she said that "... I think that many things happen in the jungle that we have to leave in the jungle." She may have meant that she doesn't wish to discuss her abuse. She may have meant exactly what she said, that some experiences are better left to the darkness of that place and time.

Though I was not held captive in the jungle for 6 years, I was held captive for 18 years in my own private, solitary jungle without the support of other hostages. This much I know: For her and the other hostages, nothing can be left in the jungle. The jungle is in her head. This is true for everyone: The Gulag, the concentration camp, all of the places where we learn, from personal experience, the extreme cruelty of human beings toward another live on our heads. Watching or hearing other people being tortured never leaves one's consciousness. Our own personal humiliation and deprivation of even the most basic of rights--those minutes and hours live on forever in our minds. Without warning, they reassert themselves and the jungle lives on and you live in it.

It took me a while to recover from the interview. Her words were inadequate to convey the horror and sadness that I recognized in her eyes. I wished that I could wipe it all away for all of those freed hostages, wherever they are.

But the jungle, the Gulag, the concentration camp, the time and locales of extreme child abuse live on forever in our heads. Forever.