Closets

He can continue to ‘clean out his closets’ for as long as he wants as far as I am concerned. I think it’s just wonderful. I will buy all his c.d.’s because they just keep getting better and better and no, I don’t openly play him in front of the kids, but it makes no difference. All they have to do is go downstairs and turn MTV on. There’s a lot worse than ‘Eminem’ on MTV that I object to.

The more he vents his anger and expresses his rage, the more he shames his abusers. The more he shames his abusers, the more society reels. Why? Because in this lousy world some people will never acknowledge, let alone apologize for their own behaviour. The victims of this ‘dismissiveness’ have only one choice left. That’s to holler even louder, become more explicit and graphic. He is trying to be heard and he will be. I hear Eminem’s pain. I cry when I hear ‘Cleaning out my closets’ and those who are dumb enough to try and shut him up are only serving to motivate him to write another song, and another…

The Bockady People

Victims of sexual abuse know all about this. I call them the ‘Bockady people’. I use the term ‘sexual abuse’ because of the recent exposure of the real extent of the abuse and the subsequent ‘dismissal’ when help was called for. However, the word ‘abuse’ may cover a multitude. It is not just sexual abuse that has our prisons full of drug addicts (not criminals as we would like to call them).

It is violence, overt and covert, which can occur in the very act of being drunk and terrifying (without hitting anyone) to not being ‘emotionally available’. This is all a spin off of today’s new addictions, food, sex, alcohol, drugs, relationships, money, power and work. You can actually include everything that can be repeated more than once.

The result of all this mayhem is too commonly presented in courts, counsellor’s offices, prison cells and juvenile homes as the now familiar ‘acting out teenager’. The child of course, is only a symptom of the family disease. Parents are as much a part of the problem as the solution and ‘families’ in general need to be treated as a whole. Not just the obvious child who is causing trouble. This is only the tip of the iceberg and until we come to grips with the ‘larger picture’ (that Daddy is beating Mammy and Uncle Jim is abusing his niece) then we are failing our children completely.

Responsible

It is no use wagging fingers at kids who stab, maim or even kill for a mobile phone or the dart fare home. If they are under sixteen then presumably someone, somewhere is responsible for them and these people should be targeted and treated as well as their troublesome off spring. If not, the suicide statistics, the escalating violence on our streets, the seemingly complete absence of any moral decorum will appear as if we are living in New York, not the Dublin we once knew.

People who have been on the receiving end of abuse, no matter how subtle, will take their unresolved conflicts in to life. They have no other place to take them, and are entitled to be heard. Not only do they have to endure a lifetime of depression, broken relationships (if they manage to have any), but also then they have to deal with the ultimate knife in the back. The denial of the abuser. What does this do to someone’s mind? Well, we can see for ourselves can’t we?

What's up Doc?

Next time you’re in your doctor’s surgery, you can surmise that half of the patients in the waiting room are being treated for depression. The guy who just mowed down people in the streets, well what’s his story? Bet its abuse of some kind. Absenteeism from work (due to depression, addiction or inability to just cope) is costing company’s billions. Our private hospitals are full of people who don’t know what’s wrong with them. Our current road accidents are the highest figures ever; they always seem to happen at 3a.m. These people are hardly out to get a pint of milk? A lot them are as ‘drunk’ on medication as alcohol.

Our prisons are full of ‘untreated addicts’ who have been forced in to some kind of crime to support it. They are thrown on the street again and on the vicious circle goes. Hurt people, hurt people.

Rewards

They are on your child’s computer waiting to do to the innocent what was done to them, because they don’t know any better. When our Church (supposedly our protectors and guides) cosset, protect and sweep over such violation of human rights, society will reap the rewards.

Although it is not a problem exclusive to the Catholic Church. It is just as likely to be your next-door neighbour who is abusing as the local parish priest.

The rewards are all there for us to see in the headlines of yesterday’s paper, today’s paper, and yes, tomorrow’s paper. It was Nelson Mandela who said in his inaugural speech ‘Don’t play it small, playing small helps nobody’. He didn’t mean people can go about blindingly abusing others because they were abused. On the contrary, if the ‘Eminem’s’ of this world all used their energy creatively and poured it in to constructive expression, there would be a lot more healing. Me? I am just about to step out and buy his new album. Keep talking ‘Eminem’. I hear you…

Information on drugs from the National Drugs Strategy Group