How the Past Writes the Present—Until We Take the Pen
The Ending I Write - From Trauma to Agency and hopefully beyond.
Some stories don’t start where you think they do.
This one doesn’t begin with my former colleague’s sudden urgency to finalize the bankruptcy filing. It doesn’t begin with the email that sent my nervous system into a spiral—blood pressure up, pulse racing, tension so thick I couldn’t sleep. It doesn’t even start with the moment, decades ago, when I first realized that I was always the one left to clean up after others walked away.
It starts with trauma. Not just one, but layers of it.
And if I’ve learned anything, it’s this: Trauma isn’t just what happened. It’s how the body, the mind, and the nervous system learned to respond—and how those responses keep replaying until we learn how to break the cycle.
How Trauma Wires the Nervous System
Long before I had words for it, my nervous system was already shaped by early-onset ostracism trauma.
From the time I was three, I experienced exclusion—emotionally, socially, and physically. Children don’t analyze exclusion. They feel it. And they internalize it. A child who learns that they don’t belong also learns that they must fend for themselves. The brain adapts, scanning for rejection, constantly on high alert. Where is the next sign that I’m being left behind?
Then came authority trauma—reinforced through physical and emotional violence in childhood and adolescence. The people who were supposed to offer guidance and safety instead became a source of fear. I learned that power wasn’t something I held, but something imposed on me. I learned that obedience and silence were survival tactics. I learned that asking for help often made things worse.
By the time betrayal trauma entered the picture—when people I should have been able to rely on repeatedly walked away, leaving me to handle what they didn’t want to face—I already had the groundwork laid for one core belief:
It’s all on me. It always will be.
The Pattern: Trauma Doesn’t Just Stay in the Past
Fast forward to adulthood, and the pattern is still playing out.
When my father died? I sorted it out.
When my mother died? I sorted it out. (Yes, my brothers helped, but the weight still landed on me.)
When my brother died? I sorted it out.
When my partner died? I sorted it out. And her family? They dropped me two days after the funeral.
And now, this. Again.
A former colleague—whom I co-own a business with—initially agreed that I would handle the bankruptcy filing after my mandatory five-week medical rehab. We had a plan. We had an agreement.
Then, suddenly, she changed the plan. She would only be available until March 31st. She had other options—perhaps a new job, perhaps registering unemployed, perhaps something else entirely. I don’t know, and frankly, it doesn’t matter.
Because the moment I read that email, my body knew.
The Response: When the Body Reacts to Both Now and Then
This is what trauma looping looks like. The past crashes into the present, and the body reacts as if it’s happening all over again.
My complex PTSD didn’t hesitate. My nervous system flooded with stress hormones. Blood pressure up. Pulse racing. Sleep impossible.
Because in that moment, my body wasn’t just responding to an email.
It was responding to every time someone had left me to carry what should have been shared. Every time my needs had been dismissed. Every time I had been forced to handle impossible situations alone, with no safety net of my own.
And then came the survival fear. The kind that doesn’t think in logical solutions but in pure, raw instinct:
“You will lose everything.”
“You will have nowhere to go.”
“This is the end.”
Because trauma tells me there are no options. That’s how survival fear works. It locks you into a single, desperate narrative: You will not make it through this.
The Shift: Recognizing the Fear, Rewriting the Response
But here’s where everything is different now.
This time, I caught it.
I felt the spiral pulling me in—and I stepped back.
I let myself feel the fear but didn’t let it own me. I named what was happening: This is trauma. This is the past. This is my nervous system reacting to an old story.
And then, the simple but life-changing question:
“What if I don’t have to react like this?”
And the answer came.
I have options. I can call the bank. I can ask for a suspension on the loan installments until the house is sold. That means time. That means space. That means I do not have to scramble for survival, do not have to lose everything before I even have a chance to build what comes next.
That moment? That was power. Not the kind of power that fights or forces—but the kind that chooses.
The Path Forward: Choosing Agency Over Fear
This is what healing does. It doesn’t stop the triggers. It doesn’t erase the past. But it gives me the ability to respond differently. It lets me step out of the trauma loop, recognize that I do have choices, and act from that place instead.
Yes, I will still have to navigate this bankruptcy, the house sale, and everything that comes with it. But I am not at the mercy of this situation. I am not powerless.
And this is why I will leave. Not in desperation. Not because I have no choice.
I will leave because I choose to.
Because trauma told me I was trapped, but I am not.
Because trauma told me I had no options, but I do.
Because trauma told me I was powerless, but I never was
And this time, I get to write the ending.
A Poem: The Ending I Write
I was born into a story
that was not my own.
Told who to be,
taught what to carry,
shaped by hands that never asked
who I was becoming.
I learned that the ground beneath me
could disappear in an instant—
that safety was borrowed,
that stability belonged to others.
I was told that doors close,
that roads vanish,
that silence follows loss
like an echo with no answer.
But I have learned another truth.
That fear is not a prophet.
That the past is not a map.
That I can step beyond the edges
of the story I was given
and write my own.
I have options.
I have space.
I have time.
And I will leave—not in running,
not in retreat,
but in the quiet certainty
of someone who knows
that the world is wider than the walls
they were told to stay within.
The ending is mine to write.
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Such an insightful post...the whole trauma story, and the way to rewrite the story in the present moment to live an empowered life! So beautiful! Well done!
Love the poem and the reminder that we always have options.