The Echo Chamber

The sound of breaking glass sends me under the kitchen table before I realize I’ve moved. It’s just a plate – slipped from soapy hands into the sink. But my body doesn’t know that. My body remembers different glass, different sounds, a different kitchen from eight years ago.

Time becomes fluid in these moments. The linoleum under my palms is both now and then, the afternoon light through the window both present and past. My heart pounds against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. Like it knows something my conscious mind wants to forget.

The therapist calls them triggers. Such a simple word for the landmines scattered through ordinary life. The slam of a car door. The smell of whiskey on someone’s breath at the grocery store. The way certain songs on the radio can turn a perfectly fine Tuesday into a minefield of memories.

My apartment is carefully curated chaos – everything exactly where I need it to be. No surprises. The furniture arranged so I can see all the entrances from any position. Three locks on the door. Windows that open fully for quick exits. Friends call it quirky. They don’t know it’s strategic.

Sleep comes in fragments, broken by the need to check and recheck. Door locked? Windows secured? Phone charged? The hypervigilance is exhausting, but less exhausting than the alternative. Than the dreams that wait in deeper sleep, where past trauma plays on repeat like a broken record.

Sometimes I lose time. Zone out during conversations, my mind pulled away by a trigger I didn’t see coming. A certain tone of voice. A particular gesture. The scent of someone’s cologne. I return to find concerned faces, missed minutes or hours, half-empty coffee cups grown cold.

The flashbacks have their own geography. In them, I’m both here and there, straddling two realities like a foot in different worlds. My body responds to dangers long past – hands shaking, breath short, muscles coiled to run. Fight, flight, or freeze, except there’s nothing left to fight or flee from. Just echoes.

People say time heals all wounds. They don’t mention how nonlinear healing can be. How you can have weeks of okay days, of almost-normal, then find yourself back at square one because someone at work wore the same perfume or used the same phrase or smiled the same way.

My therapist says it’s like ripples in a pond – the initial stone was thrown years ago, but the waves still move outward, touching everything. Some days they’re barely noticeable, just gentle undulations beneath the surface. Other days they’re tsunamis, overwhelming any sense of safety or control.

Recently, I started painting. Abstract pieces, all curved lines and chaotic colors. My art teacher says they’re “emotionally evocative.” She doesn’t know they’re maps of my triggers, my flashbacks, my hypervigilance. Each canvas a blueprint of the echo chamber in my mind, where past trauma bounces off the walls of present reality.

The broken plate is still in the sink. Eventually, I’ll get up from under the table. My hands will stop shaking. My breath will steady. I’ll clean up the pieces, careful not to cut myself. And tomorrow, I’ll buy plastic plates. Another adaptation, another adjustment, another way to navigate a world that sometimes feels like it’s made of triggers.