 That which lies the deepest in a human heart will show itself most clearly when tested to the depths. - Goessoftly Dear Elie, You will not read this, and it matters not if you do or don't. What matters is, that for me, just one sentence written in your book, "Night", tapped into my Legacy of the Unbeloved. It sent me shivering into the sea of unshed tears. Only wading because I cannot swim for miles and rare are the times I have actually done so at length. Your story does not make me cry, Elie - perhaps it will when I read on but it made me vulnerable so that last night when I watched a movie about one of the unsung heroes of the Viet Nam war, a war dog called Rain. I watched his courage, fear, pain and love, and his whimper when he had to part from the soldier with whom he had fought so unconditionally, THAT brought the tears streaming down my face. Why? Because Rain had no words to describe what he had seen, felt and experienced. Noone to share what was really in his heart and thoughts and his wordless speech tore at my heart in perfect understanding. The whimper of seperation from his only Pal took me straight back into childhood when I lost my only friend too. Perhaps, Elie, the tears were because this time it was I who was understanding Rain and it took me back to when MY dog was the only one understanding ME. Hers was silent understanding, a wordless comfort in a world that was filled with, as you wrote, " hostile faces and hate-filled stares." This is the world where you and I meet as strangers yet more intimate than lovers. Not as those who share their interests, hobbies, philosophies of life or even life's experiences. We meet standing before the ovens of emotional concentration camps. The smoke rising from their chimneys and filling our nostrils with the stench is not from the ashes of the children sent crying, terrified and screaming to their deaths. Oh no, today, as then, the smell I remember is that of the oven where little Goessoftly was sent silently screaming and terrified into the oven that was to burn her innocence to ashes. Into those flames went all my self-respect, self-confidence, self-worth and child's ability to trust. In my mind's eye I see my child's sense of Self burning. Curling at the edges, turning brown, red, white-grey in the flames of hate, hostility, rejection, cruelty, apartheid segregation, aloneness and lovelessness. So much of me died in that oven and rose to disappear into nothingness. Watching Rain last night, a wisp of smoke seeped from the chimney once again. The smell is familiar and the dog's whimper an echo of my own. My child whimper in the Night when no one is listening, when the heart is too small to hold the hugeness of its pain and no one is there to see, no one to care and certainly no one to understand. Even you, Elie, had your family before the persecution reached Sighet beginning segregation for the Jews. A very close and loving family, friends and relatives, all of whom until the Camps, gave comfort, support and encouragement till that was all but destroyed by man's inhumanity to man. Not so for me. Mine was not a whole community despised by the country, but one child despised by the community - this is relative is it not ? But you understand Stigma, Elie, very very well. In the Camps, the yellow star sewn on your clothes for all to know your non-status in the eyes of others. Numbers were not tattoed on my wrist like you, but yellow was branded indellibly in my soul in names, epithets, incessant verbal abuse or physical traumas reminding me of color. Yellow, as it happens. Truncheons and rifle butts did not beat me about the head as you knew, but beating into my heart and thinking was the dictum of unworthiness, of failure to be good enough, clever enough, trustworthy enough to amount to anything. Oh yes, I was beaten every day, not protecting my head by covering it with my arms, but covering my agonized thoughts with Hope, a yearning wordless desperate unheard plea for just one day's reprieve. It didn't come. Never set free from the fact that I was different from everyone around me. That I wasn't fit to be around them. I was Chinese, wearing my race like leprosy and feeling untouchable and unclean. Hiding behind hedges, buildings, dodging, avoiding, anything to escape the looks, cutting remarks, the ubiquitous, " Chinky, Chinky Chinaman", or, " there goes Slant Eyes". Shoved aside by adults and children alike. Not herded like you, Elie, on the trains of deportation, but deported never-the-less. Sent off on the train out of the regions of Acceptance, Belonging, Welcome and Friendship. Not thirsty, as you, Elie, under the broiling sun with guards yelling for the exhausted to, "Run faster! run, run, faster, faster." Oh yes, I was told to Run. "Run, faster, faster, and keep running" under the heat of sneers, despising, mockery, hatred, rejection. Growing more and more thirsty for one sip of Kindness to assauge my searing, unquenched thirst. To have a rest when rest was not allowed. But you were blessed, Elie. You had your father with you in the Camps. A tie, a bond, a presence amid the horrors all around. In this, we seperate, for I had no soul, no presence, no bond with anyone. Ever. No one related to me to either love or hate. Perhaps this was a blessing, I don't know. You lost your mother to the ovens. I lost my adopted mother to the ovens - the emotional concentration camps to which she too was sent and we traveled together. My child stood and watched the smoke rise from the chimney. A parent-childhood relationship burned to ashes. No substance. No solidity. Blown by any puff of wind or breeze with no direction and no purpose. I have worked as a nurse on a Burns Unit. The smell is unmistakable and once smelled can never be forgotten. I have not forgotten the smell from the oven where this parent-child relationship was so thoroughly cremated. Last night, Rain's whimper brought tears and I entered deeper into my sea of untouched sorrow and loss but all the water, all the seas, all the oceans of unshed tears cannot put out the oven fire or stop the burning that seperates the mother from her child. My mother left me the Legacy of the Unbeloved. An inheritance that started its amassing when she found me dying under the scorching sun in Hong Kong nearly sixty eight years ago. The Legacy of the Unbeloved. There is a difference, Elie, between being unloved by another race and being unloved by ones own race. I have known both, and the camps forced you to know the same. You knew hell and atrocity from the unloving of the Jews as well as the Germans. Such atrocity and torture that I have never known and hope never to experience. I cannot know the physical extremes through which you passed, or the emotional, psychological limits to which you were pushed and came through, but we each have our individual limits. Different for each person. I will not measure others by my own convictions, expectations or make them feel less for being who they are and what is real for them. One cannot be made to feel less than Nothing. This is my legacy of the unbeloved. I have grown since those years I was made to think I was a non-person. I am grateful for the measure of knowingness that I now believe and know I DO have value. Havng value is not proof against failure, of not being up to snuff, or good enough, able to meet another's expectations. The former relates to ones sense of self, the latter to performance. My condtioning gave me tunnel vision that could only see my worth was in how I performed and not in me. I am grateful for those who helped remove my one sight blinders. Ah, but my mother never knew of my other life. She did not see me cry, nor did others. She did not know my tears were growing from rivulets to rivers, leading to a sea. She did not see me standing on the shore day after day looking for the horizon that faded with distance as the waters widened in between. Hope grew smaller as rhe sky diminished. My legacy of unbelovedness still stands today though I have waded in far deeper and the tears come more easily when I allow myself to feel the pain. MY pain, not others', though this can bring tears too. Today, I do not feel there is no Hope because I know there IS. Elie, I have not read the word "HOPE" per se in "Night", but its carrion cry sounds like a bugle through your prison days. The Hope of Rescue, for an end to torture and torment, for change from death to life. It was this Hope for change however fleeting, how ever miniscule, however weak, that stayed in my child heart in the Night of unrelieved, unloved and fear-filled darkness. A glimmer, tiny spark, at the end of an unending tunnel that my young eyes strained to see and my feet stumbled towards, trying to bring it closer. Seeing it draw further and further ahead. Slipping out of reach. This is part of the legacy left to me in my child years, hoping against hope that perhaps somewhere, someone could really love me and make me feel really loved. I will never feel I BELONG. Anywhere. With anyone. Ever. But I HAVE felt Love and I have learned to love. Loving is not belonging. There is no Aloneness that is so totally, completely and utterly exclusive as the feeling, " I do not belong". This was brought home to me daily. With every door slammed in my face, with every time I was told, " Oh, so YOU'RE the little Chinese Orphan", the white childrens', " I don't like you," "Go away Chink, you're not wanted here". Reinforced with every turned back, scornful stare and laughter behind my back or to my face. Even my mother's, " Why can't you be like your mother? She had such a good sense of humour". What was there to laugh about ? I did laugh. I smiled. I sounded happy so my mother would not be ashamed of me in public. Her contented, happy, well cared for little girl. What a lie. The Legacy of the Unbeloved is to appear loved, appear happy, appear as though nothing is amiss. It is also a legacy of Hypocrisy and so often I still hide my true feelings yet abhor appearances. Part of the legacy includes not being heard. Perhaps this is the most damaging legacy of unbelovedness. My mother excelled in silencing my voice and in being deaf when I tried to use it. Never once did I dare tell her what was happening inside and outside home or school. Only once did I ever try to share my voice in writing because talking was so futile. A six year old, hesitatingly handing her my very first poem about a zoo and my great love for animals. How methodically she shredded it to pieces. Word for word. Line by line. Criticizing, analyzing, pulling it apart in grammar, syntax, meter and meaning. Methodically she silenced all my effort to be heard, accepted, understood. Thus she pushed me to my three havens of solace. My dog, my writing, my music. Here I was accepted. Here my voice was heard. No laughter, no scorn, no scoffing at or shredding of my child heart gifts. In these I knew total and complete isolation from everyone and everything that so effectively convinced me of my unworthiness and stupidity. Today I still find expression in writing when words are able to describe, (in music when there are no words), and my legacy remains because I still instinctively wait for the axe to fall when I share my writings. Waiting for them to be shredded again, taken apart bit by bit, word by word, unacceptable and error-filled. Never good enough. So it was, though where it came from I do not know - such is the heart of a child with its fathomless longing to please. I thought I would teach myself, the "Dream Of Olwen" - a difficult piano piece for a young child who had to figure out every single note because I could not read the music. Why did I expect to know anything different, or that anything would be different? It was to be a gift to my Mother for her Birthday. In my small mind more precious than a trinket money-bought. For weeks I practiced laboriously, picking out the notes, counting the black lines to see if it was a flat or sharp and which note it was, and working on the timing. Looking for the moments I could practice when she wasn't at home. Her Birthday comes and I tell her I have a surprise for her and have her sit down by the piano.The only difference from when I showed her my poem was that the mistakes were different.My timing was faulty, expression was wrong, too much fortissimo, too little pianissimo etc., etc. I never played for her again and part of my legacy is my horror of "performing" in front of others. The same paralysis I felt at school when teachers stood behind me looking over my shoulder. Standing in silence, waiting. Waiting. I froze. My mind went blank. I shriveled into nothingness hearing the voice of authority, " Let's see if Goessoftly can do this. I don't think she can, but we'll see. Well... Goessoftly?" The child made mute by fear, frozen and confirmed as a failure while the other children watched with curiosity to see what I would do. Scathing remarks from the teacher. This is one part of racism. It is also the diminution of a soul. Today, my phobia of taking exams continues. Paralysis when faced with conditions heralded with time buzzers, bells and expectations. I hear again, " I don't think she can do this but we'll see. Well... Goessoftly?" Perform, Goessoftly, your mother would be most displeased if you don't do well. In fact, she'll be downright mean. You'll never hear the last of it. Nag, nag, nag.nag,nag. She is more to be feared than the teachers. You don't live with them. The tapes still play but it is empowering to know that most have been replaced with healthy, positive ones. Through the years I had two friends, Vi and Marion, who helped me change the, " I am unloveable" to " I am truly loved". I do not think they were aware, nor consciously trying to accomplish this, but what is important is that this is how they made me FEEL. It is the difference between living in a world of grey and grey-black and walking in the vividness of color. The difference between a toneless, mechanincal robotic rendering of a piece of music and the living, joyful revelation from composer's heart - a creation liberated to flow uncensored in its truth. In this, it is not I who am expressed in music, but this is music being expressed in me. Letting in the sun instead of trying to dispel the darkness. I have no words to describe either TOTAL unbelievable aloneness, or " I am LOVED". There are parts of two pieces of music that describe these for me, but only I would understand and feel them. When I hear them there courses through my body an indescribable sense of being alive and in harmony with myself and the universe. There are times, though not that often, when my legacy throws me back into the old aloneness. When I feel again my child's fathomless and desperate longing, craving for a human touch, a kind voice and gentle hands. It is the yearning of the unbeloved in the crucible of continuous rejection. It is the excruciating desire to be held without pain and know one belongs somewhere with someone without Fear of being hurt again. I am sure this is the basis for my stringent selectiveness in choosing friends. Not looking for perfection because I am a realist, and perfection is a mirage and to seek it, a futile exercise. It is an instinctive and instinctual knowledge of the potential in another for intentional hurt, and perhaps the greatest part of my legacy is the inability to trust. Perhaps, Elie, as I read further into "Night", I will discover how your trust in humanity was affected in the Camps? I do not trust easily or often, in fact, rarely. I wrote a poem once about Trust - about someone who did not trust me with secret sins or not-to-be-told secrets, but who gave me the greatest gift of all. Trusting me to understand. Is this not the FIRST things babies do? Trust their mother to know when they feel hungry, need to be held and nurtured, when they are angry, sleepy, to know they cannot make their simple infant needs understood with words. My mother died when I was three weeks old. My adoptive mother died when I was twenty one years old - neither could be trusted to be there for me. How many times did I stand outside the bedroom door, heart beating out of my chest, throat constricted in fear, holding my breath and waiting. Waiting to hear her tubercular cough. How many times when I came home from school, did I stand outside the front door and listen through the letter box waiting to hear her. Cough meant she wasn't dead. Cough meant I would not be left physically alone to face the world. ( I was in every other sense of the word) and I couldn't trust my mother to be physically there. I had long ago learned she was not there for me emotionally though I didn't not understand it in those words - just that I was never held, never told I was loved, never kissed or comforted. She never asked me why I screamed one night when unannounced she poked her head around my bedroom door and, " Booed" me. I remember hiding under the bedclothes, my body shaking in fright but she did not ask my why I was frightened ( perhaps she didn't notice I was terrified) but said she was playing. Would I have missed her if I had found her dead ? I don't think so. I cried at her funeral, a rare thing for me to cry, and probably the first time in public but the tears were not for any loss. I cried because the singing of a hymn, the beautiful arrangement of the music was a familiar refuge in the face of my aloneness. Today, when I hear " the Lord is my Shepherd" sung to Crimond, I tell others if any are with me, " They played that at my mother's funeral" and they look sad and give me looks of sympathy. They haven't a CLUE what was sad about my loss and the legacy of that loss. I am writing this to you, Elie, because in the emotional concentration camps we smell the ovens that are so well analogized in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Belson, Buna and every other Camp constructed by destroyers of mens' souls. I could write for eons about the analogies and symbolism of their cruelties, atrocities, tortures. The abuse that depicts so clearly the emotional destruction of the human will, the mental breakdown of the psyche, and disintegration of all human dignity - all that seperates man from other levels of behavior and intelligence. Is it true, that if you treat a human being like an animal long enough, they become one? I think so many animals, if not all, are far above humans in the fact that Evil, intentional and deliberate, does not, I feel, reside in animals. Evil puts man BELOW the animal species in my mind, but when we are treated less than human, kicked, spat on, urinated on, discarded, humiliated and demeaned, treated as someone sans a human status, do we emerge as animals? I think not. Or perhaps I HAVE - and can be proud that like my beloved dog I am not ruled by evil , though I can be cruel, but it is not my intent nor my enjoyment to be so as was the case with my tormentors. So I am going to finish this. It has not been easy to write and I feel extremely vulnerable, not wanting it to be shredded and pulled apart, or if read, to be understood and heard. Perhaps I am writing it to you, Elie, because this is safe ? How did Emma Lazurus express it? " Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free? " This was the yearning of the Camps, wasn't it ? The dying huddled masses, yearning to be free. This is the cry of every soul still imprisoned within whatever wall or barbed wire fence surrounds them. This is the prison I stepped back into to take a look around at old surroundings, when I heard Rain whimper. Touching on, and looking at, the legacy given by mother and all who told me in so many ways that I was among unbeloved. I know this yearning to be free, for the taste of freedom and the desire to KEEP free and diminsh the legacy. When I read, "Night", I am touched always, by the spirit to survive. It is this spirit of rebellion and revolt, the refusal to be conquered, to submit ourselves to total slavery that kept us fighting to survive. It is not you, Elie, and it is not me, not our form or bodies, our talents or lack of them, but it is the spirit within us that recognizes life and truth and freedom. It is this spirit that kept me alive as a child, defying death, that kept me as a teen and through adulthood. It is the spirit of freedom that will not be chained, charred to ashes or molded by another, but I listen to its inner voice. Not the voice of the unbeloved, but today, the voice of freedom. HOPE was the vessel in which my child sailed across the sea of unshed tears, journeyed through the valley of the daily struggle and terror, that climbed the mountains when there were only finger holds to keep me falling, crashing far below to rocky gorge and abyss. My legacy continues, a shadow of its former power, but I will not listen to any other voice than my spirit and its message of love and freedom. This message is the legacy I would like to leave my friends and all who seek the same. To the unbeloved, to those who know what I am talking about. NOT to be copied in any form.   | LEGACY OF THE UNBELOVED | CRUMBS FOR THE STARVING | DISINFECTION | BEAUTY | WHY and WHAT | Would You Still Be My friend ? | THE BOTTLE | ROSES and THISTLES | | THE HEALING PROCESS | DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER | POETRY | Biographical Entries | |
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