Yes. You Cry Forever...

You cry the rest of your life. As I watched Tom Hanks in "Captain Phillips", I couldn't remember the true story behind the film. It alluded me at the time which it occurred. If you've ever been kidnapped, rendered to someone else's possession it changes you forever. Even when you fight the changes, they are forever and as well they evolve. You become a different person. There is no going back.  

If you were a social otter, that may change. If you're a loner, due to betrayal of any past traumas, you may want more aloneness. There's less trust for you. You want to trust, yet something tells you not to. And now usually you're correct on some level. You seem to read people better, however, you don't usually reveal that to anyone.

There's no catharsis. You want to be in a place where no one questions you or anything you do. Nature and animals are safe.

Going back to the movie, Captain Rich Phillips does everything to protect his ship and its crew as Somalian pirates attack the ship and end up taking him hostage. He sacrifices his life for his crew. Here is a man who is married and has a family. He's just a ship captain. He's not in the military. 

In the end he is threatened, beaten and so forth until Navy and Navy Seals are able to kill 3 of his 4 kidnappers and then rescue him. In the last scenes when he's safely aboard a US Naval ship, he's in disbelief that he's alive, yet the viewer is now witnessing his emotional trauma. 

This is as he begins to be examined by a female Navy corpsman, he can barely respond appropriately. The psychological pain is clearer than the physical damage he'd incurred. Now one may ask, how do you live after this?

I can tell you, it’s weird. As the last scene unfolded, I felt the emotions of Captain Phillips final realization that he'd survived. I was able to relate that to when I got free from my kidnapper. I was filled with anger that turned into pure rage. I got away yes; however, the physical damage was catastrophic for me. It’s been a lifetime of struggle. Things that others would not know of.

No one could ever replace what I'd lost. And no one I knew could relate. But now, the last scene of that movie Tom Hanks depicted a level of psychological pain that no one could understand as I could. And I allowed no one to witness the raw emotion, as Tom Hanks had shown as Captain Phillips. That, I saved to survive the trial, the surgery, the therapy, the rehab, the parole board, the attacker's premature release. I was thrusted into another life to survive I had to change careers, adapt my impulses to save my marriage, and fulfill obligations in my marriage and to my soul differently. All of that.

It has felt as though I hadn't belonged anywhere most times, including the pursuit of my running goals which were shattered by the physical damage of the crime. The only ways to escape the tragedy has been to dive into them whilst I’d exercised with others, or wrote material on a completely different genre, or worked on pain patients or did things with and for our children. Yes. You cry forever inside your soul. ---Jody-Lynn Reicher