the highest level of torture would be the old medievil style such as being skinned alive or the brazen bull...or the one where they leave you in a canoe type deal covered in honey to be eaten alive by parasites.
These are
types of torture, but whether or not they are the
highest forms of torture is relative. The capacity for human beings to do to one another actions that evoke agony is beyond listing methods of torture.
Myself, Friday, Freida, and many other survivors who have posted on this thread could easily create lists upon lists of actions taken against us. Actions we were made to do. Actions we witnessed. The permanent harm that we suffered as a result and that those around us also suffered. If they made it out alive. && I can personally vouch for having heard from the mouth of children experiences that are well beyond this.
The purpose of this thread is less to list methods of torture (we could be here all night long) but rather to discuss our specific experiences and what those experiences mean and how they have affected us & how
we would, as survivors, choose to define "being tortured."
I often wish I’d killed him. Rather than letting him die.
I often wish I’d saved him. Rather than letting him die.
When it comes to life && death, I try to remember that my ability to process these events is hindered by my neurological capacity as a human being to grasp what death and grief actually mean. Idk if this is a me-thing or if it's normal across humanity but watching people die and/or being responsible for death and/or participating in the act of killing/doing it yourself.
The "afterwards" piece where we say "I wish" is so difficult. Especially when these events occur during the moments where we are less than optimal cognitively. Ykwim. I was a kid, you were in the process of being tortured. When loss of life occurs in those moments, let
alone in
general. Let alone to someone you are attached to (at least I didn't endure this as I was incapable of forming attachments as a child.)
But I still
vividly recall the sensation of pulling the trigger, && would classify this event as among the worst in my life even though I was completely unharmed. The other one? I can't talk about. At all. I just cannot discuss it. I can barely even hint at what it is about. In drips and drops, I have alluded to it. && I was similarly physically unharmed. So was the individual in question who was already deceased,
technically.
Technically unharmed in that moment, since they were no longer capable of experiencing physiological pain responses. Spiritually? Emotionally? Not so much. Mostly bc the capacity to process what it means is simply not functional. Because what happened was an "outrage against human dignity" as defined by IHL
legally. That's the scientific definition & it is accurate. It reduces someone to absolutely nothing beyond anything that could otherwise be done to them. The capacity to process these events as little more than snapshots is simply not present.
Even though I can easily recount the beatings, the rapes, being made to torture others with a machete, being made to rape others with weapons until blood gushes out of them and they lose the ability to control bodily functions (yet remain alive, by some unholy grace, tethered to a body that is ruined beyond recovery where more than likely they
did die out-of-sight, I was given the mercy of not having directly murdered them && the mercy of being able to say "perhaps they
did recover.")
The animal abuse, the drug-fueled insanity, the "stress testing," the buried alive shit, the restraints and suits and masks and laughter
and and and and and
and and and and and
On and on to form one long, meaningless drone. Snapshots. Idk if I'm making any sense.
