Singed Armor

     Most of the guys I know have some kind of deep-seated hero complex, and I am no exception. Movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy are so popular because so many of us want to carry huge swords around, ride horses, wear shiny armor, and defeat monsters in battle. But something that I never realized before this summer is that when you battle fire-breathing dragons, you end up with a singed and dented helmet. Of course, I intellectually understood that there are always casualties in battle, but taking a punch mostly sounded to me like a good way to get a cool-looking black eye. Looking back, the naiveté there seems obvious. Even the latest Batman movie uses Bruce Wayne’s growing catalogue of crippling injuries to show that fighting crime takes its toll, and heroes get old. Yet the price of saving the day is so entirely overshadowed by the glory of the triumph that I never truly understood before that if you ride to the ends of the earth to slay the creatures that live beyond the edges of the map, all those months on the road will give you saddle sores. Blades get rusty. No one tells you that when a claw tears open your shield arm, the wound can get infected. In the last month, I’ve seen that being a hero can be glorious and fulfilling, but you mostly spend a lot of time brooding in the bat cave and getting hunted by Gotham's finest. We all want to vanquish evil, but it gets ugly when evil fights back.

     

     While working at the District Attorney's office, I met two men who first demonstrated this fact to me. One was the guy I worked most closely with, a D.A. who handles a lot of cases involving child victims. This guy spends every day protecting the most innocent and vulnerable citizens of my hometown from some of the worst predators imaginable. More than most men, he walks into deep darkness and tackles the things that go bump in the night with incredible energy and skill, and is often successful in his fight. It was exciting to be part of that mission. But, by the third day of this work, most of what I had done was spend a couple of days thinking more deeply than I ever cared to about some of the worst acts humans can commit. Eventually, that gets to you. When this man wins a case against these monsters, it isn't over: he then has to go home and try to enjoy his hero's welcome with a head full of intimate knowledge of things that most people would rather pretend could never be true. The other guy was a federal agent who is every inch the hero. He wears cool suits that he accessorizes with a handgun, he's in great shape, and he spends his time hunting down terrible bad guys. But a lot of his work boils down to looking at pictures of children being abused. Even though he's doing it for a good cause, and approaching it as a professional, he still has to spend hours every week staring at kiddie porn. It turns out that when you do battle with monsters, you end up spending a lot of time with demons.  

 

 
     I've seen this in Phnom Penh, too. The veterans here have spent a decade or more working against trafficking, fighting one of the most noble and critical battles of our time. But what most people don't realize is that a lot of guys who do this work eventually become addicted to alcohol or sexual vices, or have marriages that are falling apart. These men are going into abominable establishments on a regular basis and saving young girls, but that translates into spending a lot of time hanging out in perverse brothels. Now, there are a lot of ways to help cope with these issues, and I have been deeply blessed to be led through this bog by people who know where the quicksand is. The D.A. I worked for talked a lot about the importance of leaving work in its place every day, and going home to spend his afternoons and evenings with the people he loves. Likewise, my organization here in Cambodia is adamant about the importance of staff care and the dangers of secondary trauma. You can clean your wounds when you get them and repair up your armor as you take hits, and you'll be alright. Furthermore, I have met a lot of guys who, by being diligent in these precautions and safeguards, have managed to sustain this fight throughout a whole career. Still, I have been forced to see this summer that slaying dragons means getting burned, and it was a harsh and unexpected lesson.