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Sometimes, years later, while going about your ordinary business, thinking you’re okay and that you’ve left it all behind, a random scent, a snatch of music, a certain color, will slash a broken shard of memory through your brain. You’ll stop dead in your tracks, feel confused as all your neural circuits waken fight-or-flight hormones into your body—the same neurochemicals that were associated with that night, because as neuroscience will tell you, what fires together, wires together. So while your mind won’t hold the whole picture, you realize your body does. Your body knows. But your body is not communicating properly with your brain in a way that will give you a narrative around that trauma, something you can understand. And you need that narrative in order to become whole again. In desperation you reach for a bottle of wine, or pills, or you doggedly escape into some other addictive behavior, whether it’s long-distance running, or kickboxing, or dieting, or excelling at work, or dangerous snooping, or hiding behind masks and makeup and theatrical roles, becoming an Anonymous Girl.
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