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Good God. Yes. Those things do get embedded into our memories. I know exactly what you mean

I got a taste of that terrible experience of memory you described just a few short years ago.

A cyclist splitting the lane between the two lanes of traffic collided with the front left fender of my car as I pulled through a line of traffic, and for about three months, anytime my mind was not occupied with some task, it would replay in my head. It was a 1 or even 1.5 second sequence of what I saw, indelibly recorded and burned into my brain.

But even though it was only about a second in real life, the clip stretched on in super slow-motion, ultra-high definition mode, and I could see the cyclist in sharp vivid color, perfect ballet-like tandem with his bike, cartwheeling head over heels past my field of view.

It would play over and over again, the fidelity exactly the same as a digital copy of a movie.

Thankfully after three months the vision became less frequent, and lost some of its fidelity, to the point now when I deliberately conjure it up, it is grainy and indistinct, degrading with time.

Funny thing though-early on, as high definition and super slow motion as it was, I could never see the features of the guy’s face.

The face was an oblong, pale oval, with a dark black hole where the mouth was gaping open. No eyes, nose, ears, eyebrows, lips...nothing. Just pale white with the gaping dark mouth in a silent scream. As he went from left to right, tumbling, I could see his bare calves, the biking shoes, the spokes of the wheels spinning, even as the bike was cartwheeling, and the composite frame of the expensive bike,

But even with all that detail, I could never make out the features of his face.

Anyway. I don’t see it unbidden now. I have to think of it. Thankfully. And I wasn’t even physically injured. But I sure had a tough time getting it out of my mind.

But I did have a very jarring related experience that made me accept even more deeply the unique character of memories of that nature.

I had heard that the series “Better Call Saul” was pretty good, and I liked the guy when I had seen him in “Breaking Bad”, so late one night (about six months after the accident) I was all by myself, completely relaxed, in my own living room, and put one of the early episodes on.

It started off with the main character driving down the road of a suburban neighborhood, the camera just behind and to the right of his head, so you could see part of the back of his head, and out the front windshield as if you were driving.

The guy was turning this way and that, kind of lazily, as he talked on the phone to someone (I think)

Then...WHAM!

In an instant, from being completely relaxed and safe, my heart was pounding, and I felt encased in a cocoon of terrible panic. I fumbled wildly for the hand controller, juggling and wiggling it trying to shut the whole system off, all the while hoarsely saying “F**k! F**k! F**k!”

I thought I was completely over it. I wasn’t seeing it or dreaming about it (or compulsively relating it to someone) and was very relaxed, the thought of the accident wasn’t even in the same solar system I was, it was that far out of my mind.

But the vision, looking out the windshield of that car, and the abrupt WHAM as the guy hit some person on a bike...it reached down and made it real in a fraction of a second, and I didn’t even see that coming.

If that is a common experience (and I think it is) my heart breaks for people like soldiers, police, or firefighters who have undergone REAL trauma of some kind (I wasn’t even physically scratched) and experience anything like what I did.

I agree, thus PTSD is real. Never knew this before, but a few Months ago I watched a video on Audi Murphy, one of my all time real life heroes. Seems as much as he seemed to hold things together for the public eye, he suffered from PTSD. Each marriage he had suffered due to his inability to sleep. It ruined his marriages, due to his inability to get past the trauma.

Go figure, one of the top 5 greatest war heroes of American history, suffered for his braveness and ability to think logically under the stress of war. Yet once the war was over, he relived the horror in his head time and time again.

Back in mid 1975, I was still 17, and was traveling through a small Southern GA town Abeville GA. I was stationed at Ft Benning GA. We gave a black friend a ride home for his leave and vacation. We were drinking and smoking pot.

On our way back from dropping him off, it was like 2:00 in the morning and as we drove through the town, a police car stopped us. Seems like Mike, the drive, went through a stop sign. We got stopped and arrested for the alcohol and drugs.

I was young and naive, and Mike was like 22. He convinced me to say the pot was mine because he was like one strike away from getting dishonorable discharged. Well I did, and the next morning he was allowed to go back to the Base. Yet was held under a $10,000 bond. I had no money to pay the bond, and Mike promised to get the money to bail me out. I spent almost a Month in that damn small jail, as I waited for him to help. Evewntually I got ahold of my family and they sent me the $1000 I needed for the 10% bond.

One night is still etched in my mind, and from time to time I find myself waking up in a sweat. It was late, I figure around the time bars close. Just guessing since there was no clock for me to see. Yet I woke up to someone screaming and bunch of people yelling. I rolled over on the bunk and saw 5 white deputies beating a black guy who looked tore well over 6" and made like 250 pounds or more. They were beating him senseless with their clubs and kicking him as he tried to defend himself to no avail.

I stood up and yelled at them to stop because they don't have the right to too that. Then one of the deputies came over to my cage. (I was in a metal cage in the middle of a a big room) The deputy started running his billy club from side to side against the bars yelling at me that I better forget what I see. I remember his words exactly.

"Boy, you better STF up and forget what you see, or you will never leave this county alive. Now why don't you just settle down and go back to sleep Yankee, or we will de the same to you."

I remember being so afraid as I heard them continually beating him. I started crying and just remember waking up hours later when the Sherif showed up with my breakfast. Usually he would get me something from McDonalds or some other fast food place. But that morning I got one of the best home made meals cooked by his wife. He told me his wife cooked it especially dually for me and that there would be more good meals coming, as long as I just forget everything I saw or heard.

The black guy was not in the cage, and to this day I know he is dead. About a week later I got the money and was bailed out. When I got back to camp I told the Captain what happened, and he told me he would get someone to look into it, but it wasn't a military matter. Never heard anything more, and I never got a summons for court on the possession matter.

By the way, my Platon Sergeant is the one who came to get me when my bail money came. On the way out of town I showed him where we got stopped, and the stop sign was completely covered by a tree growing in from of it. There was no way Mike would have seen it at 2:00 in the morning.

I was also excused from being AWOL after my Captain heard what happened. It took me a long time to sleep without thinking of that poor black guy, and even today I wonder what they did to him. I could give more in depth details of that Month, including other blacks who were mistreated and railroaded but what I offer is enough to let you know the whole incident was traumatizing and still bothers me today almost 50 years later.

I’ve heard that adrenalin is what causes the memory to be burned into our brains.

I went through that trauma loop for weeks after my dad passed. He dropped dead of a massive heart attack and I did CPR on him until the rescue squad arrived. Every time I closed my eyes to sleep, it would replay.

I’m also to the point now that I have to consciously bring it up, but it was rough going for quite a while.

Interestingly, I recently had the opportunity to take a CPR course and actually signed up for it.

But as I thought about needing to do it on a dummy, I realized that it was going too trigger it all again and canceled out of the class. Maybe I should face that demon some day, but not yet.