Bare bottom, cheap seats, scratchy fur, orange, brown

Burning, sticky, poking, dry, over-rubbed

Cold uncomfortable defeat with a relief it’s over

Who were the other faceless people?

Hurriedly exiting the disused caravan,

The Conductor a teenage boy

Who thought he was a man.

It feels like a routine

Whilst I hold onto hope it was once

But I recall sitting in seats at least two

And there is familiarity in what to do

A cute compliant 5 year old being encouraged to play at the front.

Ashamed to put this in words

I hate sharing this, what if I’m fake

But very occasionally I wonder

If this helped my mind to break.

An absence of any feeling

How did I not know it was wrong

Memory so vague and sketchy

It seems to have no meaning.

It doesn’t improve with time

So I brush it aside

As if the fault was mine.

I recovered this memory at 25 years old during a depressive episode. It was visual and somatic. The somatic nature of flashbacks I think is the most distressing. In time I am finding they fade to a lightly disturbing memory if you allow them to happen.

That was my experience of this and is proving true for more recent events. Although I have some distance from flashbacks generally. A kind of numbness. Possibly due to dissociation at the time. Partly perhaps finding it a less painful way to remember, my minds layer of protection.

Apart from this old one, this is new to me. I am recalling multiple events from between 2004 and 2015 with my Narcissistic husband. I am just learning how to manage them. Some seem to need different treatment than others dependent on the level of distress they cause. Some need definite distraction if they are too intense, others I can ride hoping healing will come.

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Alice