Closed Angels

A dozen or so months ago, having more time and wanting to use it in a way that suited me, I became a temporary volunteer. I helped care for disabled and mentally ill children. One day, a girl caught my eye. She had trouble speaking. It was as if she just couldn't be bothered. After working there for a few months, I'm not sure if what she said could be strung together in 10 complete sentences. But then, I considered it normal. And I accepted it as the normal course of events. She's a very pretty, kind, and sympathetic person, with a beautiful smile, a good figure, and an inner self-control that allows her to function normally in a seemingly normal, real world.

Lately, as you can see, I've been thinking a lot, and the Colorado beetle is growing at a macabre, and in my opinion, rapid, pace. It's just a shame that the reason for its creation is even more macabre. But I'm already thinking about a new website. I don't know what it's about yet, but something is slowly coming to mind. I have to fill my time somehow, because lately it seems like I have an awful lot of it. Even though I'm away for an average of six hours a day, even though I read and study, I'd love to share my free time with someone. Ideally, with a good friend. But for now, I prefer solitude. I don't want anyone to hear me whine about the same thing over and over again. I'm leaving it to its own devices. It has to resolve itself somehow. I put it on the shelf under the title "Unfinished Businesses," which doesn't mean I intend to finish it. But it wasn't supposed to be related here, so it's best if I get back to what's important...

So, more than one person will be surprised now. After all, I wrote that I'd accepted it and come to terms with it... Well, about a dozen or so days ago, I started seeing that girl again, and a thought occurred to me. It's short, but I hope I can expand on it here, at least to some extent. I began to wonder why, at a certain point (mostly the cases I encountered in my life involved children), a speaking person simply speaks and then stops speaking, for reasons unknown to us. Almost everyone would probably say at this point that something had happened and that there was nothing to philosophize about. Well, I'm interested in that reason, and I plan to write and reflect on it in the coming days.

Let me start with this: the child had trouble speaking from the very beginning, but no one seemed particularly concerned. It was, after all, a normal, average family. They had bigger problems to worry about than worrying about "such a stupid thing." No one had time to investigate, and the child's condition was accepted by all family members. The child was very kind, modest, sensitive, and receptive to criticism. He didn't hurt anyone, and was even very willing to help. Everything was fine until the child started preschool. There, he encountered childish criticism for the first time. He cried and didn't want to go to preschool. The teacher tried to do something about it, explaining to the children that it was rude and that it wasn't allowed, and in theory, the children calmed down, but in practice, they did the same thing, only more cleverly, so that the teacher couldn't see or hear. It didn't end with insults; there were also pushes and shoving and many other equally inappropriate things. The child, of course, didn't speak anymore; he realized no one could help him. After a while, he stopped crying and accepted what the world gave him. He somehow survived preschool. School came, and the children were no better, in fact, worse. So the situation repeated itself for several years. The suppression of emotions, along with all the harm humanity had inflicted, caused the child to have increasingly difficult speech, until he almost stopped speaking.

Now that we've seen the average family, let's move down to the dysfunctional family. I think we all know what it's like in dysfunctional families. Alcoholism, violence, and sometimes drugs are prevalent. One can only imagine the environment and surroundings in which children grow up; it's enough to bring tears to one's eyes. Physical and psychological abuse is inflicted on the child. Such a little one is treated less than a thing. He develops in a warlike atmosphere, a prisoner of war in a concentration camp. If he speaks or cries, he always gets what he deserves. At some point, the unconscious rehearses his behavior. He comes to the conclusion that when he's noticed, he gets some kind of punishment, he's beaten and called names. But when he hides in corners and doesn't speak, he's almost completely at peace. He decides not to speak. He then carries this behavior into other environments: preschool, school... At work, he's a very good employee, but a strange one, constantly avoiding people, trying not to talk to them, avoiding them like the plague. Images from his childhood are still ingrained in his psyche, memories, and dreams. Often, such children don't excel at all, or they rebel and end up in juvenile detention centers, or at best, they're quickly taken away from their parents and raised in children's homes. Often (and probably always) such children have a distorted psyche for the rest of their lives.