In my mind’s eye I can still see and feel when it entered me as a child. My body becoming rigid, barely a breath leaving my lungs, eyes fixed on something unseen.

Have you ever experienced every facet of your emotional and psychological selves slowing down to almost a standstill, knowing on some deep level – or at least, realising it in retrospect – that something deeper than your conscious mind knew that it was in a situation that would damage it if it didn’t bury its own head in the sand?

So our minds forget, or they blur the lines, but our bodies hold on to the memory, sometimes for a lifetime.

The fear.

I had never experienced that kind of terror before. Where I literally was unable to move. A terror so powerful your mind shuts down your nervous system enough for you to not feel what you know is the last thing you want to be experiencing.

Sure, the fear entered me when I was sexually abused as a kid (at 5, 6-7 and 12 years old), but trauma comes in so many forms, hiding in shadows and words that force you to question the speakers intent and your own reality, deafening laughter and no one to reach out too whilst an entire education system looks away and remains inactive as you find yourself having your body beaten from every direction.

So many ways for the fear the enter you, the unfelt, disassociated fear that decides to make itself known only well after you thought the worst of it was over. Thrown into a Groundhog Hell of that same moment, same people, same trauma, over and over again.

The cycle.

One day, you find yourself living your life not even aware that its been a while since you last thought of it. And then someone who reminds you of your abuser – even if its simply gendered – though you cannot explain why they remind you of the abuser, here you are, thinking your life is back on track and you’ve picked up all the pieces and the next thing you know you don’t even remember how you got home let alone where you put your wallet.

You think back, realise what happened, and then stare out the window for what feels like an eternity – perhaps you didn’t realise how lost you were until some part of your mind recognized that the sun has gone down, escaping your notice.

So you finally drag yourself inside, lie down in bed and then many different things can happen, from oversleeping to insomnia to broken sleep to night-terrors. It takes many abuse survivors to realise the pattern because of its ability to fog the mind and shut it off – and considering that modern MRI Imaging proves to us that a brain that has suffered trauma is structurally different, specifically with regard to memory and emotional regulation.

It takes may of us so long that by the time we realise what kind of help we need any why, and for those of us especially whose trauma began during their developmental years who have no “pre-trauma” selves, who have no reference of who they were before a piece of them was stolen or damaged, the reason it takes so long and the process once started can be very arduous and painful, is because you go to see a professional for help with your suffering, without realising your suffering has become a part of your identity and then your at war with the therapeutic process because its like you are being told that someone else’s damage against you has resulted in you needing to become a different person in an almost fundamental way.

Consequences.

And so it was at the mostly innocent age of 11-12 years old that I first experienced a snap within me. All joy, all hope, all calm ripped from me, and in its place a knife with my fresh blood dripping from the blade. You see, the fear, the pain, the anger continued to expand from the moment it made its entrance into a not so easily accessible part of my psyche.

I spent every day as a school boy, with every muscle in my body tensed prepared for the next hit or the next rock to split my head open or the next gang bash, telling myself that just because they told me i was worthless and that i should “do the world a favour and kill myself”, constantly hypervigilant, telling myself that even though their gay slurs were accurately being directed at the closeted gay boy, they two became truths and then a part of my identity as the internalised homophobia grew, and grew within me.

I’d had my body touched in various ways i did not like nor want, my mind and heart and spirit unceasingly tormented until i found myself in a place id ever seen before, a place that both made me feel a little safer and more peaceful, and also incredibly alone and afraid.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Something else I think many people don’t realise is that abusers are not always peers in public places backed up by their hard-ass friends. Sometimes abusers sleep in the room down the hall, and feed you dinner. And to this day, I remember exactly what house I was living in, where in said house I was standing, and what my own mother was doing when she told me 20 years ago that when she fell pregnant with me she “made a mistake that ruined [my] life.”

To this day, I remember the place and the words and the person, the exact moment in time, when I became a shell, feeling all chords that I thought kept me tied and connected to the world of the living, all cut at once. I felt like a pathetic, tossed aside marionette and lay in brokenness for the remainder of my adolescence, and again in my mid 20’s.