dear diary, is this trauma?

10

There was a young British girl who was on a family holiday in Portugal.  Her parents and her younger siblings along with a group of other families. They stayed in a resort, four pools, a children's club and much other attractions. 

In 2007 at the age of three, this young girl called Madeleine, the children of the group were sent to bed in their apartment suits. The families ran their own "listening  group" the parents every 20 to 30 minutes to check on the children. The third parent tk do this on the night of the 3rd of May was the children's mother. At around 10pm. The patio door at the back of the apartment had been unlocked the whole night. The parents would enter through the patio door.

The window had been closed with the sutters drawn. When the mother went to check on her children, she noticed the the bedroom door had been left open more than she removed and there was more light in the room than there had been at nine when they left that night to a tapas diner. The mother pulled the door over some, not closing it fully. A gust of wind suddenly blew the door shut. The mother opened the door again and looked in, noticing the oldest child was gone, the window open and sutters open.

Madeleine was gone.

This is a famous case. A famous kidnapping of three year old Madeleine McCann. You may question why I have written this in here. The case is still going on today.

I have written this here because although I didn't really know of the situation,  I was around five at this time so it didn't effect me, not in my young world.

It may have been a year or two later, I was with my grandparents, at a friend of theirs produce farm, I'm hazy on these details.

Before we had even gone into the area, I had just stepped out of the car. There was a couple of older ladies sitting on a bench outside.

I will always be a couple years older than Madeleine, but looking at a young child, it is hard to tell the age. By this point I had heard of Madeleine McCann before, on the anniversary of the kidnapping.

I remember these two ladies not so discreetly whispered to one another about how I looked like this missing girl.
I remember that I was confused,  even at such a young age, around six or seven, I could already tell that this missing girl had to have died, I didn't understand why some old ladies were talking about me being a kidnapped child who I was sure was already dead.

Now, this story isn't only traumatic to myself, it was traumatic to many young children at the time and then such any children after this had happened.