Soul Mosaic

There are things left within that remain still totally alive today, buried alive, even though you don’t know it. They lurk…in your psyche. Your nervous system. Your memories. Waiting.

Something happens in the moment – a loud noise, a smell, a touch- and you are suddenly spiraling backwards in time, to a place of total emotional chaos and terror. It doesn’t matter how old you are now, or how long ago that memory was buried.

They are happening again…right now.

Triggers and Flashbacks

There are so many instances that I will be having a pleasant day, absorbed in something fun, and then, when I least expect it, it overwhelms me.

A knob on the kitchen cabinet catches my shirt, and I react with fear and rage at “being pulled.” Someone starts up a loud motorcycle unexpectedly, and I jump out of my skin because the loud noise was like the noise of Dad coming into my room ready to grab me. Body and sensory memories.

Then there are the emotional ones. I have hated weekends most of my life. Except for when I worked in the hospital lab. At least on those weekends, I wasn’t home and was doing something useful. When I was at home, he was at me. Either sexually, or physically if I refused. It took me years to realize that my weekend “dread” was a powerful emotional flashback to “those weekends.”

These days the weekends still haunt me. I will be cleaning the house, then I sit down to rest for a moment and look over my to-do list. Immediately, from out of nowhere, I am filled with intense anxiety and the sense I am “bad.” I feel afraid. I feel like I’d better not be “caught” sitting down. I am in danger…or I am a “bad person” because he has made that clear to me.

Then, there is the “3:00 p.m. sense of dread” every day because “Dad will be home soon,” even though he is long-dead and I am in my seventies.

Or every year in July, on the anniversary of the first moon landing. I hate that day, feel anxious, and full of dread. I just want to sleep. That’s because it was one of the worst days of my life then. I had “avoided him,” and so he was at me all day verbally and emotionally. He didn’t hit me that day – he might have had to explain why to my mother. But he would shoot me “The Look” – that intense glare of pure hatred and rage that kept reminding me I was unloved and in deep trouble. When he wasn’t doing that, he was totally ignoring me. If I talked to him, he looked right past me.

So there is no question but that those memories are totally alive yet within me. I experience them all the time.

“The Look”

We all know those family photo albums full of pictures, especially those candid ones that can range from fun to outright silly because the camera caught the person off-guard in a hilarious position.

And then there are those posed family shots too, the ones everyone gathered for and smiled in unison.

My father’s posed photos sometimes captured a smile. But, especially back then, they usually looked more like his work badge. Sour. Unsmiling. “Tough guy.” Even when we were celebrating.

This was the photo from the celebration of my First Holy Communion when I was seven. In the Catholic Church, it’s a joyous time. Grandparents, cousins, aunts, everyone’s together laughing, smiling, eating. And photos. Lots of photos.

The smiling “posed ones” would always be taken outside by the flowering bush in the backyard. Here is Dad’s posed, “celebratory” face. Could he have been any happier that day??

Or the photo of the whole family lined up at a summer barbecue.

We considered these photos “normal.” And we wrote them off as Dad just needing to wake up more. After all, Dad wasn’t a “morning person.” At home, he was always grumpy in the morning. You just had to walk on eggshells for a while. If you did everything right, you might not set him off… maybe.

From there, the rest of the day might get better or worse. Or both. But he definitely didn’t like mornings. And for those mornings where something extra was going on – being around extended family or being someplace earlier than he liked- we knew he was exerting extra effort in those moments to put on his “facade” – a face that could pass for okay – in front of the rest of the family.

On those days, he might get better as the day wore on. If he was having a good time. But it might not. We would know as soon as we got in the car to go home how our night would be.

For myself, I loved those family gatherings, because with everyone else around, his effect would fade into the background a bit. I’d sometimes forget myself and let my guard down because I was having a good time. Then I’d do or say “the wrong thing,” or not pay attention to him in a “special way,” and in that moment he would shoot me “The Look.” And in that moment, the day suddenly went dark, and my insides would turn to jelly.

No one else might notice, but I did. It was his eyes – veiled rage laced in ice, no kindness at all – and his face – the thin, tight lips and set jaw. In that moment, he sent the “message,” and I received it — “Just wait ‘til we get home…”

Then, just as quickly, he would turn to someone else and plaster a smile on his face and laugh at their joke. He could put a chameleon to shame for how fast he could switch faces. Just a turn of his head and it was a different “Dick Phillip” for them. No one would be the wiser. Except me. I knew what was coming.

From that point on, I would spend the rest of the day trying to get him to talk to me. Smile at me. Reassure myself I wasn’t in trouble. But I was.

Later, when that car door shut and we’d head home, I’d see his eyes in the rearview mirror, boring a hole right through me. Or, if he was irritable enough, he’d start snipping at all of us about whatever. Because he’d had to fake “nice” all day and was tired.

The worst, though, was when we got home. The door would shut, the Yale lock would click, and then he would let loose. We’d get the “Behind-Closed-Doors Dick Phillip.”

Sometimes it was just me he picked the fight with. But other times, exhausted from a day of pretending in front of everyone, he’d pick a fight with everyone. But it was a face no one else outside of our family unit ever got to see. That was reserved only for us.

And about today?

Are the weekend anxiety attacks, or the rage at getting caught on drawer knobs, the only ways flashbacks come out today? Not by a long shot. I still see those “looks” in the world. Or sometimes, it’s just a place or time of day that sets me off.

High school, last period

A few years ago I co-taught a science class at a local high school. It was great working with the teacher and her students. But I was unnerved. Something about being in a high school triggered old memories. One afternoon was especially intense.

It was the last period of the day. Soon the bell would ring, and the kids would rush out to head to buses or cars. I remembered that routine well. I HATED the end of my school days because it meant going home…having to be around “him” and whatever his mood might be. Suddenly my reverie was blasted away.

The buzzer went off. In the classroom there was the familiar scraping of chairs and tables, feet rushing for the door. Kids bolting to escape and go home. Loud voices in the hallway that slowly drifted away until finally, just silence. The end of the school day, and even though I was in my sixties, I was in terror.

The restaurant

My husband and I were out at the local sports bar and grille, waiting for our burgers. It was a sunny Saturday, late on a summer afternoon. All around us, families were having a good time. Laughing kids. Waitresses landing milkshakes, burgers, and kids’ meals at the tables around us. It was noisy but in a good way.

Except at the table across from us.

The soda I just swallowed nearly came right back up as my throat choked closed in fear. There it was – that look, at that table. The facial expressions were unmistakable – the quiet wife shrinking into her seat as her husband criticized her. The son looking at his plate as his dad literally growled at him. Nobody was talking except the dad. And the look on his face said it all.

The wife and kids were laser-focused on their food. The wife was intently selecting a French fry, while the son seemed to struggle to swallow a bite of his burger. The only words spoken were sharp comments from the dad, delivered like bullets from a gun. I heard the demeaning tone. The criticism, laced with sarcasm. The bully voice.

My stomach tightened, then turned. I wasn’t hungry anymore. Try as I might to just ignore them, I was flooded with fear. And anger. Nothing about that table felt safe. And then I saw it – the Look. That awful, hostile, rage-just-under-the-surface look he shot at each of them. The son saw it, then looked back at his plate.

In a flash, I was terrified for them. I feared for what was going to happen “when they got home.” When the doors closed. Even as all the other families around them were partying, the family at that table was in its own world of hell…and I was in it with them.

I looked at my husband, desperate to ground me in the present moment. I made eye contact with him and nodded my head toward that table. He saw an unhappy family, yes. I saw a family like mine.

Try as I might, I couldn’t shake the rage and terror exploding in my nervous system. I was in a full-blown flashback. Suddenly I wasn’t a middle-aged adult having a nice outing with my husband, but a child in absolute agony anticipating the blows to come.

The rage was neck and neck with my fear. I wanted to walk over there right in that moment and scream at him. Tell them all they didn’t deserve this. The more fear I felt for that family, the more white-hot my rage became. I felt so, so helpless…like I did as a kid. I couldn’t help that family any more than I could help me all those years before. And I was enraged to be going through this now, all because of some bully of a man who seemed to enjoy flexing his power over his family.

Shaking, I told my husband we needed to leave. I couldn’t watch another moment of it. He didn’t question it, understood what was happening. We paid our bill and left. It took me all night to calm down. To this day, I wonder how that family did that night.

The unresolved issues within

Aside from body sensations or emotional reactions to looks or touches, there are knee-jerk responses to someone else’s dilemma when it hits my own unresolved issues. A familiar scene triggers a memory which directly connects to something I have not yet faced. Those things we avoid, so easy to put off or ignore in the busy times of life. Yet they remain, waiting.

Then, when you see another…their situation, their issues on display, your mind races from them to you…from judging them, to looking at yourself. And the question: Why are YOU still waiting to do something about YOUR pain?

Her….

It was a peaceful Saturday afternoon. I was working in my “hands-on” education lab at the museum. All around me, families were happily engaging with the various science activities we put out on the tables for them to do. People loved it – learn by doing it themselves.

I was about to head back to my desk in the back of the lab when I spotted “her.” The rest of my afternoon dissolved in a tidal wave of rage and fear that I had to hold in check until I could let it out later, at home.

From my journal:

Her face had fading black and red lines around one eye,
and places on her face discolored.
Her eyes showed “beaten down.”
I missed it until she was about to walk out.
THEN I realized what I was looking at.

I was looking at my mother.
Me.
Just in another time, and in another face.

The black eye – did she just walk into a door?
No. The energy said it all.
Her face. Her bearing. And his…

Her “other” -with her…
His bearing – arrogance supreme.
Did he do this to her?

Dad at least was smart enough, or afraid enough
to hit us only where it didn’t show.

To hit where it SHOWS?
You’re either supremely stupid or defiantly arrogant,
almost daring another to see it.
The supreme arrogance to hit where it SHOWS!
That is all the more galling! Upsetting!
He doesn’t CARE, who knows.
And maybe he thinks no one can stop him?

She seemed weary, but yet a spark in her.
That one, she was smart.
She did all the activities, fast.
In fact, she seemed to find them easy.
She said, “This has more possibilities than just being a…mechanic.”

It was said without kindness.
Her poking back at him?
Disdain? Disappointment? Revenge?

She poked again —
“It’s easy.”
It surprised me, her comment.
If he hit her, why would she risk digging at him?
My mother did that sometimes with my father, though.

He was like an unruly child bouncing around from thing to thing.
He showed no actual courage to try anything.
On some level I think he knew he couldn’t do them.
He just pretended to be all excited to be there, but was indifferent to it all.
Like “I can do all this. I just don’t feel like it.”
Was he the one who did this to her?

For me,
emotion was delayed.
But when it came…..Anger, no, FURY.
Absolute RAGE.
And FEAR.
It exploded within me.

I had to stay professional. I was at work.
But I wanted to throw up.
That choking sensation gripped my throat.
I could just SCREAM!
I WANTED to.
To take him on. Right there. Right then.
Call the police.
Something.
I wanted to cry so badly that my eyes burned.
So many unstoppable reactions taking control.
Like some force outside my control suddenly taking command.

I wanted to save her…
wanted to fight “whomever” did this to her.
Will she leave him?

I gave her info for the local community college’s biotechnology program.
A six-month certificate could get her in a good job.
Will she call them?
Will she act on whatever she finds out?
Was she even asking about it for herself?
Or was this trying to make HIM become something else?
Even so, might she try, herself?

Did I say enough?
Did I say the right things?
Why the hell didn’t I see her eye sooner?
Why the hell didn’t I pay attention more?
Why the hell didn’t I pull out my phone and DO something,
but it was too late.

I could have passed her more college info…or the local women’s shelter information.
All I did was talk, oblivious.
Missed it,
lost the chance.

Instead, I spent the rest of the day
vibrating with raw fury
that I could only journal about at home.
An entry she would never see.

Ed understood.
Gently holds me.
Comforts me.
Reminds me
I can’t save her.
That I did enough.

I can’t know what she was really seeking.
Or what was going on between them.
I only knew what I felt off of them.
But I can’t take it on.

Ed sees pain in me, gives empathy, caring.
How did I go through all that and end up with such a good man?

Later, unanswered questions flood my brain.
Why don’t women leave?
Why didn’t Mom leave?
Why did it take ME so long to leave?
Will that woman leave?

What did she feel the first time someone hit her?
Betrayed her love, joy?
What did Mom feel the first time my father hit her?
How old was I the first time he hit me?
It’s beyond my memory. It was always there.

Will this woman leave, get an education, get out, escape in time?
Odds are, probably not.
Why NOT?

But then, why don’t I do the things that are healthy for me now?
Am I any different than her in the end?
I don’t want to exercise.
I especially don’t want to go to a yoga or exercise class.
I don’t want to be there. Why?

Right now my mind feels like, Where can it go to escape this pain?
To feel better and forget her.
I hurt all over.
My fingers, toe joints, elbows, shoulders, knees, hips.
I get up from sitting and can barely make my legs move, or my feet walk.
Can I change this? Is there a way to fix it?
Maybe it isn’t simply, “This is how it is and how it has to be.”

Why do I resist and avoid the things that are good for me?
Am I any different than that young woman?
I need to exercise, but I don’t want to.
I need to stretch out tight, sore, cramping muscles, but I don’t want to.
I want my body to just do what I demand of it…
*what it could do 40 years ago.
I show it no mercy. Why?

I’d rather do something cerebral.
I feed my brain but starve my body of care.
I need to say yes, against the no.
Start easy, gently, nurturing.
Almost without effort, yet with results,
tricking and overcoming the resistance.
I need something that sedentary, in pain, people can do, feel better, succeed at.
Why do I avoid self-care?

Is this video it?
I found it by accident…
Or coincidence?
No, synchronicity….
I was supposed to see it right at this moment in time….
A woman on Amazon says her 85-year-old mother likes it; it helps her.
If an 85-year-old woman can do it, I have no excuse.
But still, I try to avoid it.
Why won’t I care for me?

My body aches.
My heart hurts.
I should try.

Ed notes I seem always ready to fight.
Anything.
Everything.
People.
Cars in traffic.
Always ready for a fight.
But of late I have started to ask myself –
Is this a good thing anymore?

Maybe I am too ready for a fight?
Inner anger waiting to be released?
Inner anger at all the wrong things?
I escaped that house,
I fought my way out…
and back to life.

I work hard at anything I want to achieve,
Know I can achieve any intellectual pursuit.
In fact, I CANNOT ABIDE NOT fighting for something I want, intellectually.
So why then, do I fold when it comes to my health,
especially the health of my body?

“He” demeaned “caring about appearance.”
He…Dad… used my body for his purpose.
It was there to serve him.
Not me.
*Can I TRY to stop hating it…punishing it for betraying me?

I can’t save that woman.
But..I can save me.
I MUST try.

Is there life beyond flashbacks?

I’m not sure I have an answer for that. I still get them. Maybe less frequently…but not by a lot. When they happen now, there is comfort in knowing exactly what’s happening to me. For years, I tried to “get rid of” those “negative reactions.” I didn’t realize it was the past harms haunting me. I thought I was failing in some way because they kept happening.

My therapist said to me one day, “You HAVE PTSD. It will be there. You come by it honestly. And you have good reasons for the reactions that come up.”

The reality is that they may never go away. The damage done to me is permanent. But it can be managed and eased and transformed. I’ve already made a lot of progress on that. And when they happen, I just greet them now like old friends.

So I will keep digging. Keep releasing, embracing, and loving all my intense emotions that come up during those trigger moments. I won’t push them away. Instead, slowly, carefully, with therapy and EMDR, I show them honor.

Up next

About those emotions that come up…what exactly are they? What is underneath them…driving them? And is there a way to get to the heart of them…and change them?

So, up next – Emotions

Note:

I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.

Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.

Tags: family, fiction, life, love, writing

This entry was posted on July 9, 2026 at 11:48 am and is filed under Memoir - sexual abuse trauma recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.