Unless you've been there, it's impossible to know or even imagine what it must be like to carry a deep secret throughout life. It must eat away like a maggot at the core of a Granny Smith making it's way to the outer skin where all the goodness lay.
Start with the truth and it's plain sailing - things can only get better but start with a lie and the seed is sown for eternal damnation, things will never get better. One lie leads to another and then another and then another, there is no turning back once the deception begins, it can only grow until the perpetrator no longer has any control over the monster they have created. Their own monster, their Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde alter ego.
To be incarcerated by law or by force must be difficult to endure and retain any degree of sanity but to be imprisoned, locked-in by your own actions, must be a living nightmare. A nightmare that will never cease but only become more unendurable as time progresses. Just imagine what it must be like to be isolated in your own self built prison, no way out, no secret tunnel to escape and breath that fresh air again, the fresh air of freedom.
Since the beginning of the year 2020, think just how many millions of people across the globe have been feeling lost and lonely, not devoid of human contact but deprived of a sense of reality, a feeling of isolation like a personal voyage of grief and mourning. Locked away in a surreal world where there doesn't appear to be any escape, starved of fresh air and freedom of movement. The basic human right stolen overnight by invisible goblins and gremlins outside of your control.
That is a reality, a situation imposed by an anonymous force intent on the destruction of life as we know it. A life of freedom of choice, speech and movement halted overnight, literately overnight, to be replaced by prolonged uncertainty and fear for the future. Not only our future but the future of new generations wavering under the threat of a new world that offers nothing but blind servitude and isolation. Maybe mankind will be preserved by chemical substances and pending advances in technology, like robots at the command of the flick of a switch - or a click of the mouse.
A situation created by fellow man but out of our individual control.
Turn the table and think what it must be like to live a parallel existence but of your own making. That must be how the primary suspects in the disappearance of little three year old Madeleine McCann must be feeling - Gerry and Kate McCann, living their own self created nightmare. Even if protected at the highest level of the political regime, still they have to live with what they have or have not done in the past. They can never escape, they are incarcerated in their own little prison with no parole on the horizon.
It matters not how many new suspects are promoted by the ever faithful media, Gerry and Kate McCann know what they have done, they know they can never escape their own self inflicted inner torment. The world's population are in an untenable position by the hand of an anonymous dictator - the population can be excused for the nightmare they've been forced to endure, they should be applauded for endurance, discipline and self control - and communal compassion, an attribute decent people only know how.
Do Gerry and Kate McCann and their team of friends, wealthy benefactors, associates - even family, deserve empathy? Should they be likened to the general populace who have been unwittingly imprisoned by an outside force? Do they have any rights? Have they earned the right to freedom, the release from their eternal nightmare?
Well maybe yes, if it were simply a case of philanthropic goodness between man and woman but what if the whole scenario concerns a three year old child, their own daughter? Should that same philanthropic outlook be applied ....
Because of the COVID-19 virus, life as we know it has been suspended, we can't be blamed for that. Can we say the same for the parents of little Madeleine McCann, can we fairly and reasonably excuse their self induced position with such benevolence? Opinions will differ but in the current climate of uncertainty it is difficult - impossible to empathize with the prime suspects in a very serious crime. The disappearance of a three year old little girl. Children are always used by the mercenary media to tug the heart strings of decent people, especially when begging for money but a genuine victim of a heinous crime is conveniently overlooked in favour of promoting the innocence of the prime suspects. People out there are looking suspiciously for an invisible enemy, at least they are not looking over their shoulders for the visible enemy.
It's a tough world and it's not getting any easier. On the whole people are decent but it only takes one despot and it's ardent followers to press the button of destruction - so we are living the nightmare imposed by the despotic force- out of our control.
Gerry and Kate McCann however, have the luxury of release from their self imposed prison - they can tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So the locked-in syndrome is no more - oh to be in control of your own destiny ....