This morning I stumbled across an interesting talk about the trauma of working for organizations like the NSA or the CIA, or any of their contractors.
It’s not hard to imagine how the effects of that stress might ripple through a family, or indeed a whole world. We’re all pretty much soaking in it.
“I’m illuminating the shaky basis for what we might think are essential transactions in a functional society.”
I have an older brother. He was born dead, seven years before me. I don’t know what his name was, if he even had one. I don’t dare ask.
From Jennie Vansaco’s excellent “What’s in a Necronym?“:
Fifteen years later, the clinicians Robert Krell and Leslie Rabkin identified three types of replacement children: bound, resurrected, and haunted… A “haunted” child lives in a family overwhelmed by guilt, which imposes “a conspiracy of silence.”
Yes. Even though none of us would describe me as a replacement for him.
How can someone without a name, with such tiny feet, leave such a large footprint?
He probably never even wore shoes.
He is still here, screaming in the corner of the room, using all the air in all the breaths he never took.
