Hope Through Suffering — Pain Will Cross All Our Paths

As we journey through life, pain will cross all our paths. It is not a question of if, but when. I myself feel very much in limbo. Being only four months into tinnitus. Not knowing if it will improve, worsen or even if I can handle life this way at all. In these times we can draw from previous experiences, and seek guidance of others. This forum is one great way to do that. It has helped me gain more insight into this condition than doctors and audiologists have been able to provide (I mean no insult to them, it just is what it is).

As I hope to be able to write a success story of my own one day, I am not there yet. I have however, thought a lot about my own past experiences, working in a refugee camp. Refugees have suffered in a very existential way (some of them also dealing with tinnitus due to war). As tinnitus can also bring about a very existential crisis, I see the strength of the human spirit in dire circumstances and draw hope from that. That's why I would like to share some of that with all of you here as well, hoping that it will give others who suffer perspective as well.

For the last three years my work environment was a refugee camp in Greece. The camp has been called the "worst refugee camp in the world" many times and was (until it burnt completely to the ground) an abomination on the borders of the so-called civilized European Union. At its peak, 20.000 human souls were living in it, though it only had official housing space for about 3.000 of them. This resulted in conditions that created unfathomable human suffering, and death. I won't go into all that here now, as this is Tinnitus Talk.

I do want to tell one out of many stories of human suffering that I encountered, as it's the hope shining through it that gives me perspective and hope as well in dealing with tinnitus. It's about a man I met, let's call him Abdul, who had fled Afghanistan many years ago and reached the safety of Germany together with his family many years ago.

In Germany Abdul had suffered a head trauma in a car accident, which had left him with severe 24/7 chronic headaches, tinnitus and another psychological trauma. While in a psychological unstable state, he asked the German refugee institutions to be returned to Afghanistan. And even though his psychiatric counselors advised against it, the German authorities obliged and he was put on a plane back to Afghanistan.

Getting off the plane in Afghanistan, and coming back to his senses, he found himself again in a war torn country, bombs and everything, and realized his mistake. So, he fled once more. This time reaching as far as Greece, but ultimately getting stuck there in the refugee camp, where I met him.

Abdul always had a smile on his face when we talked, even though the deep scar on his head and the look in his eyes told his story about his continuous suffering. His position was hopeless, because he was not allowed to continue to Germany, as he'd asked them to return to Afghanistan and a second chance was no option according to the rules. So he remained in limbo in the camp for years, without a future, but with his 24/7 headaches, tinnitus and the abysmal living conditions. He again asked to be returned to Afghanistan, because that was the only way left for him to go forward. However, his position became even more hopeless, when he was taking a nap in a nearby field of a Greek olive farmer together with a friend. The farmer thought them to be thieves and shot a gun at them, injuring his friend. Abdul went to the police together with his friend and testified on his friends behalf. But what he didn't realize, was that now he was part of an official lawsuit and pending the outcome of that case, all his rights were postponed and he was not allowed to leave Greece anymore. His case had no court date at all until he got a lawyer, which he was unable to do due to the bureaucracy in the camp. So now, he could not go to Germany, he could not even go back to Afghanistan, his refugee application was postponed indefinitely and the authorities just erased him and forgot about him. He did not exist anymore.

One morning the police came to me, asking me to bring them to him. Turned out he had to come with them to the morgue to ID his friend. Apparently, they had tried to swim back to Turkey from the island where the refugee camp was located (a 10 mile stretch of violent seawater). His friend drowned but Abdul actually had made it half-way until a Greek fishing boat picked him up and rescued him.

This did not break Abdul, still when we talked, through his pain and suffering he managed to smile at me. A year after this incident he told me he found "a way" to leave. Something with a truck and a ferry off the island. The day after I went to look for him and he wasn't there to be found. I've never seen him since.

This story is not about tinnitus per se... It's about profound human suffering and hopeless situations. About existential crisis and depressions. Tinnitus can do this and more. But the human spirit it strong and can rise above this all, like Abdul did, however incomprehensible this may seem. As long as we can have hope for a better life, we can strive to live a meaningful life and pursue happiness and dream of the future.

This helps me to look forward, even though today brings pain. I hope for a cure, hope for remission, hope for habituation. And in the meantime I look for strength and hope in others and in my own past.

Thank you all for this forum and I hope this story offers some hope to others as well...