Page 83 of Beautifully Broken
"Hey," Uncle Tony says, kneeling beside my chair. His usually gruff voice is impossibly gentle. "Don't do that. Don't beat yourself up for having a normal reaction to trauma."
"Normal?" I laugh bitterly, tears streaming down my face. "It's been eight years, Uncle Tony. Eight years since Trevor, and I still can't hear about someone being taken without completely losing it. How is that normal?"
"Because trauma doesn't follow a timeline," Nonno says quietly, his hands still steady on my face. "Your brain is trying to protect you the only way it knows how."
"By making me fall apart in airports?" I shake my head, frustrated with myself. "I'm supposed to be stronger than this. I've done the therapy, I've processed it, I've moved on. Why is this happening to me now?"
Daddy's arms tighten around me. "Sweetheart, healing isn't linear. You know that. You've told me that when I have bad days about the divorce."
"That's different," I protest weakly.
"How is it different?" he asks gently.
I don't have an answer for that, because it's not. But my trauma feels bigger, messier, more shameful than anything else.
"That girl out there," I whisper, nodding toward the main terminal. "Her father looked so scared. So desperate. And all I could think about was Tessa's parents at the funeral once they found her body, how they looked at me like they wondered why I got to come home and she didn't."
"Did they actually look at you that way?" Nonno asks softly. "Or is that guilt talking?"
I close my eyes, trying to remember. The truth is, Tessa’s parents had been nothing but kind to me, even in their grief. And they didn’t know I was thereason their daughter got her neck snapped in an abandoned crackhouse on the South Side of Chicago the summer before she was going to leave for college.
Trevor was my ex. And he used her to lure me to that house.
I should be dead, not her.
"Guilt," I admit quietly. "It's always guilt talking."
"And what do we know about survivor's guilt?" Daddy prompts gently.
"That it's normal but irrational," I recite, the words familiar from countless therapy sessions. "That I survived, and honoring that means living fully, not drowning in shame."
"But knowing something intellectually and feeling it emotionally are two different things," Uncle Tony adds, understanding. "Tesoro, you can know all the right answers and still have your body react to potential triggers. That doesn't make you weak or broken."
"It makes me feel broken," I say, leaning back against Daddy's solid warmth. "Especially when it happens like this, out of nowhere. We were having such a perfect day, then..."
"You heard about someone else's nightmare and your body remembered your own," Nonno says simply. "That's not broken, piccolina. That's human."
"I hate that it still has this power over me," I whisper. "I hate that Trevor can still reach through time and ruin moments like this."
"He hasn't ruined anything," Daddy says firmly. "You're here, you're breathing, you're surrounded by people who love you. You felt something awful, but you're working through it. That's not him winning, that's you surviving."
I take a shaky breath, the truth of his words slowly penetrating the fog of panic and self-recrimination. The worst of the attack is passing, leaving me drained but clearer.
"I keep thinking about her," I say, my voice steadier now. "That girl. Wondering if she's scared, if someone's looking for her, if she has friends who are going to blame themselves for not protecting her."
"The police are looking for her," Uncle Tony says gently. "And her father seemed to have people with him. Just like with us coming for you, she is not alone."
"I know. Logically, I know that. But trauma brain doesn't do logic very well."
"No, it doesn't," Nonno agrees. "But that's why you have us. To be your logic when your brain gets hijacked by old fears."
I look around at the three of them; Daddy still holding me, Uncle Tony kneeling beside us with worry etched in his rough features, Nonno's steady presence anchoring me to the present. They're not looking at me with pity or impatience, just love and concern.
"I'm sorry," I say quietly. "For falling apart on our first day of vacation. For making everything about me when there's a real woman out there who's missing."
“No, please. We are here for you. We know everything you went through was … well, it could have killed you,” Nonno says.
“That real woman reminds you that you were a real woman, too, when all this happened,” Daddy adds.
