PTSD: It is not just being triggered by gun shots and fireworks. It is often triggered by the smallest things.
Like driving to N and after more than 3 years STILL having to pull over because I cannot breathe after driving on the A43 past the garden centre where we had lunch the day I found out. The same roundabout that is the turn off to where they first lived together. To where she works and to where I asked her outright and she denied it, saying she'd never lie to me, how could I think that of her.
It is weird because it is really specifically that roundabout only. Dread grows in my stomach for miles before I approach it. Anxiety ebbs away once I am past Tiffield. That's the thing about trauma: it attaches disproportionate meaning to seemingly tiny details. You'd think I'd get triggered more by being in N, being reminded of my relationship as a whole.
I think it is because what it reminds me off is the period just before and for months afterwards. Where I was utterly, utterly despondent and suicidal. The ONLY memories attached to that area are awful, traumatic ones. And I feel every one of those feelings again, every time I drive past that roundabout. It is an almost perfect image as well. A roundabout has many roads leading off it. Like my memories. Sometimes I drive past and the memory of me cycling there to surprise her at lunch time pops up in my head. What a fool I was for not understanding why she seemed so flustered about that. Other times, I remember she told her mother she loved someone else at the garden centre there, months before I found out. What a fool I was for not realising that. Or when she'd come home from late from work. When o asked her why she was late, she said she was late because she'd been "scoping out the houses around her work", despite us planning to move to Sheffield a couple of months later. What an absolute idiot I was for never questioning that answer. (I know I wasn't an idiot, but I am reminded of feeling like one back then).
I have tried many different ways of dealing with that. Mostly telling myself not to be such a fucking wuss. It is only a fucking roundabout. I've tried hard enough. From now on, I will drive to Northampton via the M5 only.
Why am I telling you this? Because trauma doesn't just play out in the Big Things. It is quite often hiding in the small corners. In the places you forgot to avoid because you didn't know you had to.
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