Trauma is not the event. It's what the event did to the nervous system, to the patterns, to the way certain situations feel even years later. The hypervigilance. The triggers that seem disproportionate until you trace them back. The ways the past inserts itself into the present without announcement.

Talking about trauma in the present tense is hard because the social expectation is that it's the past. You're supposed to be working on it, moving through it, processing it into something resolved. The honest account of still being in it — still being affected, still being managed by it in ways you don't always choose — is harder to voice.

Anonymous thoughts about trauma posted here are from people who told the honest version. This is what it sounds like.