It’s not what you think

I have to tell myself this constantly. When car horns blow, and voices are raised. Every time someone else drives. Anytime I’m late and someone’s waiting. Easily startled is an understatement when describing my reaction to things I have no control over. Initially I began to believe that the bouncing of my leg was just nerves. I was nervous, and that to me, seemed normal. Everyone gets nervous sometimes. When meeting someone new, or making a big presentation at work, everyone gets nervous. However those things don’t make me nervous. Those things don’t cause my knee to bounce uncontrollably and my heart beat to quicken. The things that draw my breath and makes my brow sweat is the sound of children being chastised. Feeling cars become faster than I can comprehend, or yells directed to stab at your back. Those things give me flashes of a childhood I fight everyday not to relive.  At almost 35 it’s taken me half my life to understand that it’s not what you think. Going through childhood trauma sharpens your body’s natural fight or flight response, but it wasn’t till I began to go to therapy that I found out about our third response or lack thereof. Freeze. You have fight or flight or freeze. I never had the option to fight, it never even crossed my mind to do so. I took flight so much in the beginning you would’ve thought I was flying away to those fucks my mother never gave. No my weapon of choice was to freeze. I laid there night after night frozen unable to move for fear of retribution. I stood there day after day unwilling to run because if I took it all, they wouldn’t be touched. 7 years was enough to damage me for the rest of my life. But I made it out, I made a way for myself and left that all in the past. So why while my friend whips her car through the traffic of 75 do I feel like I’m going to die? Why is it when I hear arguing I tense up waiting for the blows to strike me? Besides realizing I have heightened senses, therapy helped me realize my nerves had full on anxiety. Avoiding confrontation, latching onto people who are nice to me, feeling hopeless. I was shown that the things I could not explain were not uncommon for people who have been through what I’ve been through. My anxiety makes me feel like the air has been taken out my lungs and my limbs no longer work. It makes me feel like any moment he’ll show his face and I’ll be stuck. But therapy’s helped me understand, it’s not what you think.