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When Past Trauma Punches Us in the Face
Trauma can shape us but doesn’t have to define us
*Warning: This essay discusses trauma, including child abuse, but does not contain graphic descriptions
A smell, voice, or sound can take us from our present lives and plop us back into the worst trauma we’ve ever experienced. We panic and reel as old, gnarled scars are painfully poked. Or, we realize compartmentalizing bleeding wounds only infects our healthy spaces. We are forced to confront and re-experience our pasts, and we despise doing so.
A pre-dawn phone rings, and we recall the last call we received at 4:00 a.m., which only brought terrible news. A car backfires, and we duck — reminded of gunshots we witnessed long ago. Grandma’s perfume wafts through our open windows, and a painful heart-twinge reminds us of our grief over her death.
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, PTSD reared its ugly head throughout my young adulthood. On a camping trip, someone used Dove soap — the soap I’d used as a kid to scrub away the abuse. The scent threw me back into pain I was reluctant to embrace. I felt stupid and powerless. I couldn’t control my stream of tears nor my hardcore vomitous reaction.
I was nine again. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
