Interviewing a Person with a Traumatic Experience - Essay Example

Narrative Interview Part I When I was assigned the task of interviewing someone with a traumatic experience, a lot of names surfaced in my mind. It appears that most people live comfortable and happy lives which is contrary to the reality, many secretly deal with issues. I also believe that all people and every family experiences their own challenges and struggles that cause anguish. The first person I contacted in this regard was my aunt, a widow, whose husband had died about three years ago. Her sadness was quite apparent at his funeral. When I called and told her about this assignment, she said she might not be able to help me with it. The reason why she declined was quite surprising; she learned about her late husband’s affair right after his death when his mistress came to the funeral and ended up soliciting her for money. Consequently, she had transited from a state of deep sadness to anger. Even though it is three years since the demise of my uncle, she has sore feelings about him. The other person I had in mind was my first Chinese literature teacher, who had recently lost her mother. She has been a close friend for almost ten years. However, it is not right in the Asian customs to share the bereavement over a recent death. She, too, refused to be a part of this project. I clearly understood her response since she was still dealing with grief over the loss of her mother and was not in a position to talk about it comfortably. The third person I planned to interview was my tutor. She was the first person to accept my proposal. However, I decided to drop the plan of interviewing her after deep consideration. We had worked together for almost two years and she was both a friend and a tutor to me. It felt awkward for me to ask her to share one of her sad experiences in life with me. I could not risk jeopardizing our relationship. I finally decided to approach my best friend for the interview. We send messages to each other everyday, despite her being in the UK. I know her well because we confide in each other. She is part of a complicated family system, which has subjected her to a lot of challenges since early childhood. One day, I lay this project to her, and as I had anticipated, she response was affirmative. She asked if it must be about someone’s death and I told her that it could be anything as long as it is as sad as losing someone important in life. She said, “The only event that made me have a truly post-traumatic experience and that felt like a great loss was the ‘web thing’.” I suddenly realized what she was talking about because I was among the peple present at the time of the incident. Suddenly, all memories of the event flashed before my eyes and it felt as if it had happened the previous day, even though the event had occurred almost two years ago. The “web thing” is about (let me call my friend Miss H) what H wrote in an article and posted on-line. This article gained her “fans or followers” in her fight against her father and his “lady affair.” H lives in a family that is deals with issues more frequently than a regular household. One such problem is all those ladies that get involved with her father, have extra-marital affairs with him. H went back home during her winter break before the event (Web thing), which happened in spring of 2012. During her stay home, she received a package from an unknown lady. The contents of that package were vacation and travel pictures of her father and the lady. H and her mother were not surprised at all to see the pictures, as they did not expect any better from her father, but both of them were very sad and angry. She also received phone calls from an adolescent boy from time to time who claimed that Mr. H was his father too. After the end of vacations when H went back to school, she engaged herself in regular academic activities as usual. She felt more peaceful because memories of the events that had happened during winter had started to blur out and vanish just as it had always happened before (talks and rumors of extra-marital affairs had happened several times in the past but she always let them go and forgot about them). However, one night, over a chat on Skype with her mother, she saw her mother cry and say, “I cannot stand it any longer and that woman showed up again here.” Her mother was usually calm despite their family mishaps. This was the first time ever that she had complained and looked stressed out in front of her own daughter. H felt so hurt that she decided to do something to put an end to her father's affairs. There are a lot of websites that provide the users with forums where they can share and discuss whatever they want. There is a large forum in China, which has sub-forums for different cities as well as for different institutions (e.g. schools) in each city. H chose to post her article under the forum of the woman’s school in her city, so that she could see it and know that it was about her. It was an article about several things that H’s father did to his own family and how his affairs with ladies like her agitated H’s mother and made her feel really bad. The article was quite well written and gained a lot attention in no time. Within a week, the article could be seen not only in that forum, but also in many other websites nationally. “I was more than surprised because I started to receive e-mails and messages from many people who were willing to ‘solve’ this problem for me,” H said. I knew what they meant was to physically punish her. “I am scared,” she told me, “I also got an email from a man who claimed that he is the dean of the law school of that lady (the woman is one of the master's degree students in that law school there). The dean said he can expel her, but I needed to delete the article because it was bad for the school’s image.” H also received a lot of friends’ requests on her social networking profile, although she had no idea how those people traced her in different websites or what they wanted from her. There were some people who even knew which college she attended and where she lived. The scariest thing is that she will never know who these people are as they are anonymous over the Internet. Someone who offered to help H could in fact be a friend of that woman. Some people even wanted to meet with H to “talk about how to solve this problem” but it is not hard to guess what these people might actually do if they come face to face with H. One cannot anticipate their reactions with certainty. The possibility of getting harmed as a result of posting an article online is in itself quite horrendous. At the same time, as the article spread, H’s father also saw it and recognized that the article was about him and that he was being blamed online. He called her day and night in desperation and frustration. H finally picked up the phone and was ordered by her father to immediately delete the article. During the interview, H said: “I did not feel any anger from my dad and all he wanted to do was just to help me.” Her father promised her that once she pulled the article out of the website, he would leave the lady immediately. However, even though it was only a week since the article was posted online, it was already too late to pull down the article from the website. The reason was that the article had earned a lot of clicks and had been shared over and over again. In order to pull it out, H had to write an e-mail to the customer services’ department of the host website and request it to the delete the article. Nonetheless, the manager replied that her post would not be deleted unless H, as the writer, openly declared that the article was completely fake and apologized to the concerned people for the slander. “I was scared at the idea that those who had supported me would now feel that I had cheated with them. This might turn their sympathy with me into anger and disappointment. I did not know if they could still find me or not but they already know my accounts on the different social networking websites,” H said, “I did not want to apologize but I had no other choice.” H posted an announcement claiming that she was just a writer and that all she wrote was fictitious and she had made it up. It was not hard to imagine how the readers would react to such a “fact” or confession. H became the target of negative comments and cyber-bullying and was judged as immoral and irresponsible. She closed all her social networking accounts and only wished that her father would keep his promise. However, after she had pulled out the article from the website, her father never called again and made her feel like nothing had ever happened. H said to me, “I felt I was used and manipulated at that time and I ended up being hated by so many people.” H had developed hyperthyroidism in her sixth grade which she recovered after treatments. This experience put her under immense pressure and she became easily agitated. H said, “About nearly one month later, I felt as if my heartbeat had increased and I had become quite easy to agitate. I knew it probably came back.” She went to the school hospital for the blood tests. Again, she was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. She called her father and talked about the illness. He just told her to have a good rest. Mr. H never talked about the event and it was crystal clear that he would not keep his promise. I think this interview was quite sad. During the whole process of talking, she looked calm but showed helplessneass in some instances. I could only say that I knew and understood what she was going through. It was nearly three years since the event happened. In response to the question how H and her father are doing now, the answer shocked me. H’s father divorced her mother and married the very lady H had mentioned in her article about three months ago this year. “I cannot believe this happened because my father never wanted to have a divorce before.” H said. “Do you think you have changed after this experience?” I finally asked. She said, “I don’t think so. I have not gone back home for a long time because I do not want to go there anymore and I am always busy. My mother comes and visits me from time to time. My father also came to visit once. We both pretended as if nothing had happened and I guess I have no courage to go back home ever again. We were so close before, but now, it is lost.” I could feel her sense of loss. Sometimes, loss is not about death, it is when someone can still see the loved one but without an intimate relationship like before. For H, this memory serves as a reminder not to trust anyone. H also mentioned that she has never gone back online. She no longer posts any articles or even comments. Now she does not pick up the phone when the number is unknown. I can understand that she is more concerned about network security. The potential traumatic possibilities of this event have made her more cautious. Besides what H said, I do not see any other changes in her life. She still is a great student and takes care of herself well. Read More