Tales of a Traumasita

       I was twenty years old, and my bloodstream was about seventy percent tequila and thirty percent trauma. That particular cocktail made me a walking Molotov, ready to ignite at the smallest spark. Confidence wasn't the word for it- no, I strutted through life like an unhinged rooster in high heels, feathers puffed, chest out, daring anyone to come at me sideways. And trust me, plenty did.       The Steel Monkey night club was my church back then. Sticky floors, thumping bass, smoke that clung to your hair no matter how much shampoo you threw in it later. My friends and I worshipped at its alter with cheap shots, bad dancing, and the kind of laughter that could peel paint off the walls. We didn't go out to blend in; we went to announce ourselves. Every table, every floor, every goddamn bathroom stall knew we had arrived.       By closing time, the ritual was carved into our bones: pile into the car, music blasting, voices s...

      PART ONE :  The Dream      It began not with clarity, but with the jagged lightning of recollection, striking in fragments.      White.      Empty.      Pure blinding white. And then- FLASH- two round shapes, side by side, joined in the middle, resembling Harry Potter glasses. Gone again as it jolted me awake. The first time it happened, I didn't know what to make of it. Sleep trick? Imaginary shapes dancing on the edge of consciousness? But it kept coming, relentless, persistent, as though my own brain had taken a part of itself hostage.       I saw them at night first, in dreams that didn't feel like dreams, particles like shards of glass piercing my sleep. White light, round shapes, then gone. And then they started creeping into my waking hours.      Flash.      Gone.      Flash.      Gone.       The ...

       Red Rover was never just a game. I remember the taut tension, the anticipation, the collision when hands met hands and children fell into each other's arms, some laughing, some crying, all bruised in some way.       That memory, playful and terrifying in equal measure, became the metaphor for the invisible force threading through my family: trauma. A force passed down like a secret handshake, carried in the body, the cells, the very DNA that knits one generation to the next. It is both inherited and imposed, a chemical echo of suffering reverberating across decades, unacknowledged yet potent, shaping lives before those lives have had a chance to understand themselves.       Science calls this epigenetic inheritance , a phenomenon where environmental stressors, abuse, neglect and trauma leave marks on our genetic code, altering the regulation of stress hormones and neural pathways. Research by Yehuda et al. (2016) demonst...