Читать книгу The Throwaway Boy - Alix Chapel - Страница 24

(During)

The human mind is a wonderful device. It can protect us from extreme pain and suffering by blocking out what is too hard to cope with. Without my knowing, Billy’s mind was doing just that, blocking out the traumatic events of his childhood in exactly this way. The memories are there, they are just locked away, until something triggers them to surface. Many times this happens in the form of a flashback; when thoughts, actions and emotions that have been repressed are brought to the fore, triggered by either internal or external circumstances, evoking the original trauma.

The memories that are evoked are obviously emotionally loaded and the very fact that they can appear uncontrollably and unpredictably makes them all the more difficult to deal with. They can take up residence without any invitation and so many things can be triggers that it is impossible to keep them in check or to have any control over them.

As the years went by, and as Billy got older, it was becoming harder and harder for him to continue wearing his mask and suppressing his memories. Triggers out of his control were causing him to have flashbacks more and more often. All those years, nobody knew what was actually going on in his head. Not even me. Then in 1997, the floodgates opened and all the horrific memories bubbled to the surface. It was out of his control. His mind had taken the burden for so long, shielding him from the pain, until eventually it was in overload. It then quickly became apparent that, in essence, I had lost my husband. The man in our house looked like Billy but it wasn’t him.