To be or not to be

Much controversy over the proposed demolition of Grenfell Tower, the 24-floor London tower block that was consumed by fire on 14 June 2017, killing 72 people and injuring many more.

Some people say it should stay there to recall the tragedy and all the careless mistakes that led to the inferno. Others say it should be demolished as it's an unwanted reminder of a dreadful disaster, forever traumatising those who want to put it behind them and have some kind of closure.

My opinion is neither here nor there as the tragedy never affected me personally, but for what it's worth I'm in favour of demolition.

Surely keeping the tower there acts as a disturbing trigger for any sensitive person who walks past it or sees it from their window, and would rather not have the awful reality of that day constantly thrust at them.

Those who want to preserve the tower say its presence stops people from forgetting the disaster, but did New Yorkers forget about 9/11 after the remains of the twin towers were destroyed? Of course not.

Apart from anything else, the tower requires regular maintenance to ensure its structural safety. Can it withstand really strong winds like those of Storm Eowyn a couple of weeks back?

Those who favour demolition are planning a remembrance garden or a memorial to mark the tragedy. That seems more sensible than maintaining a burnt-out and rotting shell for years on end.

PS: The Ministry of Housing says engineering advice is that the tower is significantly damaged and will get worse with time.

Pic: Grenfell Tower

Put it behind you

How often have you heard a politician or some other public figure - or even a family member or friend - refer to some traumatic event in your past and say "You've got to just put it behind you"?

Do they realise how deep a trauma can be and just how hard it can be to "put it behind you"? Yes, maybe you can bury a minor personal upset, but a truly devastating emotional injury is a different matter.

A serious trauma can embed itself in your psyche so deeply that it lingers for years, set off by one chance trigger after another. You can't simply tell it to go away. You can't simply shove it in your mental attic, shut the door and forget about it.

So those people who tell you to put it behind you are being both offensive and ignorant. Offensive because they imply it's something quite superficial and easily disposed of, and ignorant because they don't understand the reality of living with profound emotional anguish.

My mum's brother was flying a Spitfire in World War Two when he went missing and was never heard of again. I think my mum was still grieving her loss when she died at 96.

Northern Irish people are told to "put the Troubles behind you". Survivors of the Grenfell Tower inferno are told to "put it behind you". Ex-prisoners are told to "put it behind you". What if they can't?

But it's a convenient attitude for people who don't want to deal with the intransigence of someone's mental suffering and just want it to be gone. Do they think you can wave some magic wand and poof, it's all done and dusted?

Private agonies

When I was young I used to think that although a few people were psychologically screwed-up and overwhelmed by life, most of us were healthy, well-adjusted individuals who found life easy to deal with.

It's only now, with a lifetime's experience behind me, that I realise that actually the vast majority of people are in some way psychologically damaged and find life an endless struggle. Very few people are lucky enough to have got through life without traumatic or calamitous experiences of some kind, experiences that often leave life-long mental and emotional scars.

Just scratch the surface of someone's seemingly calm exterior and you can open quite a can of worms. It could be something as simple as persistent self-loathing or as complicated as a heap of paranoid delusions. We're all hiding some inner demon we'd rather not display or talk about, and pretending we're as normal as apple pie.

It's good that more and more people are finding the courage to break the silence and reveal their personal agonies. Celebrities in particular are confessing to their eating disorders, acute anxiety, crippling depression or secret fears. And that encourages the rest of us to be equally candid.

I think my father had a bucket-full of inner demons but he never talked about them. He felt he had to be the tough, resilient, dependable head of the household and must never show vulnerability or weakness. We might have had a closer relationship if he'd been able to expose himself more.

I've blogged in the past about my many neuroses and hang-ups due to my dysfunctional parenting, boarding school bullying etc etc. I've managed to have a fulfilling life despite all the inner snarl-ups, and I feel better for revealing so much private turmoil. Bottling it all up is dangerous - sooner or later something has to give and it won't be pretty.

As the old saying goes, Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.

To stay or to go?

It's conven-tional wisdom that divorce has a very bad effect on children, that it can seriously traumatise them and damage their self-confidence and sense of security. But can a failing marriage be just as damaging?

Keeping a crumbling marriage going "for the sake of the children" isn't necessarily the right thing to do. Ending the marital tension and bitterness and making a new start might actually be the better choice.

I wonder about all this because staying together "for the sake of the children" is probably what my parents did, except that they never said much about their relationship so it was never made explicit.

However, I do vividly remember that at one point my mother was planning to move out and took me and my sister to see several flats she might have moved into. As it turned out, things were patched up, the marriage continued, and the divorce never happened.

But there was always tension and bitterness in the marriage, which didn't do my emotional health any good. My father was bad-tempered and prone to verbally abusing my mother, as well as demanding she be the traditional housewife, cooking his meals and doing the cleaning.

Would it have been better if they had divorced, put an end to the constant tension and abrasiveness, and provided my sister and I with a calmer and happier household? I suspect the answer is yes and we kids would have benefited. But who can say? It's one of those nebulous what-if scenarios.

I've certainly seen what look like very fraught marriages and very emotionally troubled children, but who knows what the children need? And for that matter, what the parents need? Feeling more and more ground-down by a frustrating marriage is itself emotionally destructive.

Whatever the decision, it's a tough one.

Damaged soul

We all have a few grievances about the way our parents brought us up. But a 32 year old County Durham man* has a grievance so strong he's suing his mother - for not protecting him from his father's beatings.

He claims that between the ages of five and nineteen his father hit him several times a day with various implements or tried to throttle him.

He says his mother had a duty as a parent to take reasonable steps to protect her children from the violence, but instead she aided and abetted his father.

She should have got an injunction against him or divorced him. She shouldn't have let him remain in the house.

The son is seeking over £50,000 damages for pain and suffering, the cost of therapy, and his subsequent inability to complete his education, form relationships or hold down a job.

His mother denies liability for the assaults and says her son is exaggerating what happened to him.

It's shocking he feels so traumatised that he has to seek closure by resorting to the high drama of a court case, with all the emotion and stress and hostility that can involve.

Most of us, even if we had endured severe brutality or neglect from our parents, would try to resolve it in a less spectacular way, confining ourself to therapy or some other method of putting it behind us and getting on with our lives.

The law can be a very blunt and heavy-handed way of dealing with a problem, often making it worse or leaving a sense of injustice still festering.

I can't see how a financial settlement, however large, can be any substitute for the emotional catharsis that is surely what he really needs.

The courts can do a lot of things, but fixing damaged souls isn't one of them.

* He can't be identified for legal reasons