I have always been drawn to books and movies that deal with the concept of identity. Certainly, there have been countless excellent stories of individuals finding themselves, but what has grown to capture my attention are those accounts concerning the polar opposite; think of all of the areas that have been covered, all the places that a person can get lost: amnesia, multiple personality disorders, drug addiction, brainwashing, Alzheimer’s. There likely exists an endless list of possibilities for the disruption or disintegration of one’s personality. It’s kind of hard to believe so many of us manage to hold it together.
Then I got thinking: What if a person, with all of her wits about her, was not permitted to have an identity. It may seem like an unlikely scenario, but this occurs every day in the United States (and abroad) through the growing list of witnesses and victims who have entered the Federal Witness Protection Program.
In life—especially in a democratic society as ours—we are told we can be whatever we want to be. Work hard and you will succeed. You’re only as limited as your imagination. Eat well, exercise, get good grades; the world will be your oyster. In witness protection, however, your choices are few. You have control over virtually nothing. It makes the darkest days of Soviet communism look like a libertarian society. Live here. Work here. Friends? Probably not worth making, since you could potentially put them in danger, and the acquaintances from your past need to remain there indefinitely—friends, family, and otherwise. It leaves little to the imagination, and even less to the motivation of getting out of bed in the morning.
So, then I got thinking (again): What if a person thrown into this life was thrown in as a child? Imagine a scared little girl being tossed about from place to place, shoved through a government bureaucracy and shot out the other side in the form and style of a contrived image generated by someone on the GS schedule. Childhood and adolescence are confusing enough; we’ve certainly all faced our own identity crises. But without our significant choices and goals, who exactly are we? Our successes and failures shape us as much as our hopes and dreams. And suddenly there she is: adulthood. Armed with a pseudo-independence and a vague sense of maturity, she has learned less about who she is as who the government as told her she is. This woman is now a one-dimensional twenty-something institutionalized by self-imposed bars of protection; she can see the world outside even if she is unsure of her place in it.
So, then I got thinking (a third and final time): How would she escape? How could she escape? What would have to occur to make her world eventually adjust to the point where it would have naturally evolved over the course of two decades?
The Federal Witness Protection Program is one of the most essential, if not ingenious, government programs to have ever existed, and it’s made an impact on the Justice Department that no one could have foreseen. Protecting a witness to the degree of making them disappear is an astounding event. I suppose I just wanted to ask—and answer—this question: What happens to these people once they disappear?
Please visit David Cristofano's website for more information.
Comments