⚠️ Mature Audience Only
This post contains themes suitable for adults. Please proceed only if you are 18+
We talk about trauma like it’s something that happened back then.
Past tense. Closed case. Filed away.
But lived-in trauma doesn’t stay in the past.
It settles into routines.
Into how someone enters a room.
Where they stand.
What they watch.
What they never quite turn their back on.
I’ve seen it at crime scenes.
The family member who keeps apologizing—for breathing, for standing there, for being alive.
The witness who remembers the smell before the sound.
The victim who survived and doesn’t know how to explain that survival didn’t feel like winning.
Trauma isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it’s meticulous.
Careful.
Hyper-aware.
People don’t “move on” from it.
They learn how to carry it without dropping everything else.
And when I look at a scene, I don’t just see what was done.
I see what will linger.
In kitchens.
In bedrooms.
In the spaces where no crime scene tape will ever reach.
Because the hardest part of violence
isn’t what it takes—
It’s what it leaves behind.
—Samantha Leary
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