The Need for Truth

I have loved Criminal Minds since I flipped through channels its first season and caught what I now know was the fourth episode. It is appointment television for me.

As is so often the case, there is one character I identify with more than the others, Spencer Reid, and I tend to be sympathetic to him. There are others that I like, and another I have a definite crush on -- Hotch mentally reminds me of my father (as opposed to Morgan who bears a definite physical resemblance to my dad around the same age with three differences: weight, skin tone, and eye color).

Last night's rerun addressed Reid's night terrors which seem to have memory values. He is remembering a real incident, but some of the memory comes from reports he's heard, some is conflated with emotional reactions, and some is an immature interpretation (the incident occurred when he was four) of adults interacting around him.

Lord knows the boy deserves his PTSD. Reid is the designated whump character for the show. Those of you who are into Stargate SG-1 should nod your heads sagely and whisper "Daniel" about now.

Reid insists on exploring the dreams, figuring out what's real and what isn't. He's defensive about it and abuses his credentials a bit (but less than we see most weeks on other crime procedurals -- not defending, just saying). Two of his teammates stay to help him, and we see the other members of the team back at Quantico lending a hand as well.

Both the characters who stayed behind (Morgan and Rossi) as well as one of the Quantico teammates (Garcia) ask Reid why he's doing this. All he says is he needs to know the truth. Reid even has a moment where he's talking to a complete stranger about something completely different which leads to an insight on how to approach the next phase of investigation. (Note to Morgan/Reid slashers: Was Derek a little "hands off, bitch" with the woman Spencer was talking to?) I have had analogous experiences.

Morgan keeps coming back to it -- Rossi too, but we see Morgan do it more often and he's conspicuously missing from the hypnosis scene -- the question of why Reid can't walk away and leave something buried.

I find myself furious at Morgan, and, to a lesser extent the other characters who question Reid, because he can't understand a simple statement: "I need the truth."

Now I know some of this is informed by my own PTSD night terrors and batch dump. They happened nearly thirty years ago. The irony is most of the memories I got back were good ones, happy ones even. The subset of scary memories -- from just before I was four years old which is another reason I overidentify with Reid on this -- was quite small, but the scary memories were the ones my brain protected me from and to do that my brain took the good ones as well.

It took three years for my mother to ask me about the memories that had caused the problems that made me question my sanity and flunk out of college. She finally asked me over the celebratory dinner we had when I graduated. I asked her where Dad was when we were supposed to be evacuated, who the men were that had threatened her, and why was everyone so angry. She said, "You can't remember that."

Dad answered me. When the orders came for families to leave Saigon, he and several fellow officers were in India. He cut short the trip to get back to us before we left.

Mom took up the story from there. She knew he would try to come back, so she stayed put for as long as possible. What I had overheard were Marines threatening to frog-march her onto a plane if she didn't report for evacuation the next day.

I have always had the memory of saying goodbye to Dad at Saigon airport. I also said goodbye to my Sunday school teacher, who looked just like Elizabeth Montgomery on Bewitched, and the driver who took us to Sunday school, too.

There were a few memories of Viet Nam before that, but after the night terrors -- and waking your roommates with screaming is nearly as bad as being messy -- I also remembered the face of the man at the shop where I selected my aodi fabric. I remembered deciding I was smart enough to be a first grader and trying to join their class rather than go to nursery school. The principal took me to her office and we talked all morning. At the end of it, I agreed to continue with nursery school and maybe they could start me in first grade the following year. The evacuation prevented that, of course.

Mom refused to believe that particular memory until Dad cross-examined me a bit. My description of the principal's office, the principal herself, and bits of our conversation convinced them both. Especially because I remembered the principal didn't speak English, we'd spoken French the whole time.

I remembered the chickens on the median strips in the road, and the sensation of waking before dawn to catch my school bus. The traumatic memories gave me back a great deal of beauty and joy.

And I'm furious with Morgan for not understanding why Reid needs the truth, no matter how awful it might be, because working through the trauma, KNOWING the truth, will give him back his father saying he loves him and trying to play Little League and all the other good things the bad memories might have been masking. I yelled at the TV a lot, watching this one.

Truth, even bad news, is always better. It's not just on television that I hear of people trying to protect others from the truth because they think not knowing the bad parts is better than knowing all and potentially understanding all.

For those of you on my friends list who are into Myers-Briggs, is this need for the whole truth, regardless of the horror, part of being an NF? Is it part of being a J?