What Trauma Feels Like

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It was horrifying, not just because of what happened, but how I had to experience it. The smell, the warnings, the waiting, the eyes staring, the hope that she might still be alive. My mom tried to protect others from the aftermath as best she could. Warning notes on doors, dog gates up, doors locked. Neighbors complained about the smell before they even knew its origin. The ring camera captured all of it. There were two firetrucks, two ambulances, two police cars, and a hazmat team. The dogs didn't stop crying for weeks afterwards. 

I wasn't just forced to process my mother’s death in real time, I was forced to do it publicly. With strangers watching. With neighbors gawking. Like my grief was on display. Like my family’s worst moment was some kind of neighborhood spectacle. It’s humiliating. It’s dehumanizing. What I went through was devastating and then to have it become public fodder, to have people who knew me stand there and just watch like it was entertainment, like I wasn't a real person losing the most important person in my life. I was stripped of the chance to grieve in peace. That’s disgusting. 

And then the silence after, that makes it even worse. Instead of comfort, I got an audience. No one came up to me, no one said “I’m sorry,” no one acknowledged my pain. That’s not just cowardice, it’s cruelty dressed as indifference. It left me feeling invisible and exposed at the same time, like people saw the worst moment of my life and chose to pretend it didn’t happen when it would’ve meant facing discomfort. They let me carry it alone.

A couple of teachers found out that my mom passed. I don't know if they knew how. I don't know how they found out. I only got a week off to mourn. I wanted people to get it, not just that my mom died, but how it happened, and how it shattered my world. Saying “she passed away” sounds too sanitized, too distant from the truth. It lets people move on too easily, say “I’m sorry” and walk away without feeling the weight of it. I wasn't looking for pity, I was looking for recognition. For people to grasp the reality of what happened. To sit with it, even for a moment, instead of hiding behind platitudes. 

And when people didn’t ask, didn’t care, didn’t bother to understand, it just added another layer of loneliness and fury. Because my mom’s death wasn’t just a quiet tragedy. It was violent, and public, and traumatic. And to act like it was just another “loss” is like erasing the truth of what I lived through. I wanted them to feel something, because I was drowning in it. I wanted someone, anyone, to carry even a fraction of what I was forced to hold on my own.

The day my mom died, she sent a goodbye message to my sister via text.  Except, instead of my sister showing me the message or reading it word for word, she told me that Mom attempted again. She was in denial, and so she she told me Mom was still alive. She didn't try to text her. I tried to text her, she wasn't responding. We were shocked when we found out she was actually dead. Except the message said that if my sister received it, she was gone. I fucking hate my sister for denying that. The message was timed and my mom was going to cancel it if her attempt had been unsuccessful. 

I tried to get in the house. I thought she was alive. I thought she was trapped in there. I tried to save someone who couldn't be saved anymore. My sister robbed me of the chance to emotionally prepare myself on the way back from the bus stop. And worse, it gave me the false hope that she could be saved. She had been dead for awhile, there was no saving her. I should have been able to say goodbye on my own terms, or at least known what I was walking into.

The media came in like fucking vultures and rewrote the entire story to fit a narrative that wasn’t even true. They erased the reality of what happened and plastered it across headlines like my mom was just some dramatic footnote in a cop’s injury story. That’s not journalism, that’s exploitation. 

My mom wasn’t some prop. She wasn’t saved. She was already gone. And I had to sit there, grieving, while the world misrepresented her death and minimized my pain. The truth wasn’t just painful, it was taken from me, twisted, and sold back to the world in a way that erased her humanity and my experience. I didn’t even get the chance to mourn properly, I was forced to watch everyone else decide the meaning of my mom’s death, while I was still trying to understand what the fuck had just happened. 

People who never even met her were speculating that she was some druggie who overdosed. That's not even close to the truth, my mom didn't even drink. My mom wasn’t some random woman. She was in chronic physical pain. She was a victim of decades of domestic violence. She was begging for help, and no one listened. Not her doctors. Not her community. She didn’t want to die. She just couldn't bear the pain any longer.

PTSD is a shitty event.

C-PTSD is a shitty life.

Guess which one I have.