so the thing abt trauma is that even if you don’t remember it, it still affects you. repressed memories can still cause triggers, alter your brain chemistry, make you more hesitant, more afraid, stop you from functioning normally.. even if you have no memory of why
and i think it’s easy to dismiss everything alice went through because she doesn’t remember it so it can’t still affect her right? but that’s not how trauma works.
imagine an alice who’s hypervigilant, who can’t stop scanning the future for any negative possibility because she’s so so afraid something bad is gonna happen (and it will be her fault if she doesn’t see it). an alice who jumps when she’s absorbed in a vision and someone comes up behind her, who can’t stop shaking afterwards even though it was only esme.
imagine an alice who doesn’t need to breathe but still desperately fills her lungs with air when involvement with the wolves obscures her visions. who hyperventilates because not being able to see the future makes her feel blind and small and vulnerable. an alice who sometimes gets flashbacks to her human life mixed in with her visions and can’t move for hours afterwards, irrationally terrified that it’s her future instead of her past
imagine an alice who has panic attacks because something triggered her and she doesn’t even know what. an alice who freezes at the sight of a woman with a particular piece of jewelry because her brain has gone into full panic mode. an alice who is physically incapable of being near a hospital for reasons she can’t explain. an alice who gets lost in her own daytime nightmares sometimes and can’t seem to find a way out.
imagine an alice who goes days doubting her own sanity. she doesn’t even know why, it’s just been drilled into her head that she’s crazy and can’t trust what she sees. she remembers the things people called her, even if she can’t hear their voices. she knows there are rational explanations for her visions but no logic is able to hold back the waves of shame and confusion and fear she drowns in those days
just because alice can’t remember what happened to her doesn't mean she’s recovered. it just means she has no idea what’s going to affect her and how. it must be so hard for her, able to predict everything except her own reactions. and yet despite everything, she still tries to see the beauty in the world.
even within the neverending unpredictable hellscape that is her life, alice chooses, over and over again, to do good.
we don’t deserve alice cullen.
(special thanks to @rosalie-stan for the neuroscience knowledge!)
