When the Body Remembers Trauma the Mind Buried
PTSD doesn’t announce itself. It arrives uninvited - through memory, through the skin, through silence.
⚠️ Content warning: ⚠️ This piece contains vivid descriptions of trauma, accidents, and medical distress, including death and injury. Reader discretion advised.
I didn’t plan to write this.
I didn’t even plan to remember it.
But sometimes, a quiet sentence or a moment of kindness kicks open the door to memories you’d rather keep buried.
Today, I was chatting with a woman I hadn’t seen in weeks. We work out of the same co-working space.
She was wearing a beautifully cut overcoat that suited her well. I said as much - she smiled and told me she’d been on a much-needed break to Ireland.
We must be roughly the same age.
Our conversation was easy and we both had smiles on our faces.
She mentioned she’d last been to Ireland forty years ago - and reminisced.
She asked if I’d ever been, and I said, quietly, that Ireland in the early 1980’s meant something else entirely to me.
Not a holiday destination.
Not then.
Something in my answer must’ve struck her - perhaps my reticence. I don’t know.
Then she spoke of her early life - of growing up not with pride in her country, but with guilt. Inherited. Ambient. Heavy.
She was raised in what we’d both known as West Germany. Her parents had been children during WWII.
She talked about what she’d been taught in school. What she hadn’t. And what lingered.
And that - that - opened something in me. A chink in the usual reserve.
I found myself speaking of two of the WWII veterans I’d known as a boy.
One a British airman. One a German soldier.
And before I could catch myself, I was describing something graphic - too graphic. I saw the look in her eyes. That flicker of discomfort. Maybe even alarm.
I stopped. Apologised. Felt guilt of my own.
She left not long after. I sat there, back at my desk, trying to focus - but something had shifted.
My mind wasn’t in the room anymore - the past didn’t tap politely.
It kicked the door in.
What followed wasn’t a thought, or a memory in the usual sense.
It was physical.
Visceral.
Like a reel of film jammed into the projector and forced into motion.
Images. Sounds. Smells.
Out of order.
Fully rendered.
Uninvited.
Silverstone Circuit: 1983
I was still a boy. Working illegally for £1 an hour, cash in hand. Car park duty at the MotoGP. When the main rush of cars had stopped, I drifted away from my post towards the track.
I was stood perhaps 150 metres past Stowe Corner.
The first few riders shot past - engines roaring - so fast they blurred.
I felt the vicarious joy of their fearlessness.
Without warning, it happened
Right in front of me - on the rain slicked tarmac.
A collision so powerful the bikes disintegrated - but the riders - that was worse.
One catapulted into a wall of railway sleepers. Helmet off mid-air.
The other hit the track face-first. His helmet also gone.
It was obvious they were dead - graphically so.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My world slowed down - but only inside me. Outside, it carried on.
Eventually I turned away. Walked back towards our transport.
The foreman, an adult who’d driven us there - an old biker, missing an arm from a crash years before - simply told me to get back to work.
So I did. For another four hours.
The dead were strangers - it was the pre internet years.
Later, much later I learned their names - their stories.
Regardless, it stuck.
The image of broken bodies.
The silence that followed.
No debrief.
No check-in.
No mention at home.
That was my first experience of violent death.
I was a passive observer. I was not responsible - my body logged it anyway.
West Sussex: 1986
An old Austin Allegro - my first car.
Flame orange. My pride and joy.
I was heading off to work in London - left early - before 7:00am.
Reached the car, turned back to the house - thought I’d forgotten my keys. But they were in my pocket. That delay changed everything.
About ten miles in, just short of Clark’s Green, I was behind a Rover 3500.
A lorry coming the other way veered across into our lane. The Rover driver tried to swerve by turning hard right. Too late.
The lorry hit full-force on the passenger side.
The car folded.
Crushed to half its width.
I stopped just short of the wreck.
There was a briefcase-sized mobile phone on the passenger seat beside me. One of the early ones. I used it to call emergency services, gave them the location.
Then I ran to the car.
Front door wouldn’t open. I punched the glass - nothing. Tried the rear. It gave, eventually.
He was still alive. Barely. A faint mewing came from within him but I knew he was fucked.
Blood oozed from his nose, ears, mouth. I climbed in behind him and put my hands either side of his head. I remembered you were supposed to keep the neck stable. His head felt soft. I felt his skull shift. I softened my grip.
There was an open wound. I could see grey matter.
I spoke quietly. Pointless, reassuring words. Told him help was coming. Told him he looked fine.
He didn’t.
Time stopped once again.
I existed only in that moment. Nowhere else. No one else
I didn’t hear the ambulance arrive.
Just a voice at my side.
“I’ve got him, mate.”
I moved out the way. He climbed in. His eyes met mine. And I knew.
That silent communication. A hark back to our earliest wiring. That embedded knowledge.
I blinked. The world came back into focus.
I realised that if I hadn’t turned back for those keys, he’d have been cradling my shattered form.
I had to leave. Got back in my car. Started the engine. Drove.
About 10 minutes later, the shakes hit. Cold sweat. Nausea.
I pulled into a roadside café and tried to let go of the wheel. My hands were stuck. It made no sense. I focused on my hands - it was his sticky blood keeping them attached.
I fought down my fear, prised loose my fingers and walked to the toilets.
Washed him off me - his blood and worse. Then threw up. And then again, until I was empty.
Time passed.
I sat in the café, ordered sweet tea, and stared out the window.
Suddenly it was late afternoon.
There was only one route home. By the time I passed the scene, everything was gone. No record. No sign of a life ended. No visible scar. But I carried it within me, buried deep, forgotten.
I don’t remember if I ever told my girlfriend.
She’d been caught in the Harrods bombing years earlier.
Some things just stayed unsaid.
This was the second.
I wasn’t a bystander. I was in it. Elbow-deep. Part of the scene.
Egypt: 2009
My daughter was eighteen months old.
My son was just ten. We were in a remote part of the Red Sea coast. Marsa Alam. A chance to rest. A chance to play.
And then… she got sick.
High fever. Brutal ear infection. The nearest hospital four hours away.
The guilt came first.
What the fuck had I done?
What father brings his infant here?
The resort doctor tried - failed - to get a drip in. My partner and I had to hold her down.
She screamed.
She bucked.
I held her more firmly. Pinned her.
I felt like a torturer.
My rage surged. At the situation. The injustice. The fear of loss. It had nowhere to go.
So it amplified.
The doctor stood in front of me.
Our eyes met - my thoughts naked in front of him. I saw his fear.
Some part of me - dark and real - wanted to inflict her pain on him.
Wanted to bellow at him: ‘Save her. Or die. Here. Now’.
As fast as it came - it left.
I pleaded with him instead.
Sobbed.
Told him to do whatever it took.
Inside, I screamed to a God - or a Devil - I didn’t believe in: take me.
End me. Let her live.
She lived.
If I’m indebted – I don’t care.
But the moment never left me.
Not entirely.
I didn’t witness it from the edge. I didn’t move through it with purpose.
I was trapped inside it. Useless. Powerless. Watching her scream while my hands held her down.
Not a bystander. Not a rescuer.
Just a father - failing.
UK: Now
Seventeen years since Egypt.
Thirty-nine since the crash.
Forty-two since Silverstone.
And a conversation - unguarded, brief - dragged it all back.
Not gently.
Like a reel yanked off the spool. No sequence. No mercy.
Heat in the chest.
Lump in the throat.
That violent pressure behind the eyes.
The urge to cry.
The stronger urge to shut it all down.
Swallow hard. Push it back down into that box.
And then the voice inside: Who are you to feel this? Others have seen far worse. Man up.
But that’s the point.
It isn’t nothing.
These memories don’t live in the past.
They live in me.
Not as stories.
As places.
Fully rendered. Inescapable.
They arrive when they want.
They don’t ask permission.
They never leave.
This isn’t a message. It’s a memory. Substack just happens to be where it surfaced.
A very powerful piece Mark - I think this may be your best work so far. Thank you for being so honest in your writing - I’m sure there are many people who can relate to the power of flash backs and PTSD and how challenging it can be to keep a lid on the past sometimes. This is a real insight to how strong and resilient you are Mark and I’m proud to call you my friend. Amazing piece.
Harrowing Mark!!! I’m not surprised it all came flooding back… It’s interesting as I had a conversation with my niece this morning who went to see a kinesiology in Australia where she now works as a medical Dr. The kinesiologist found all sorts of trauma in different parts of her body (I won’t go into detail here) but it was so interesting how she helped her to release that trauma from her body. Thanks for sharing Mark.