Reader Report – I got written up for PTSD.
I wasn’t crying.
I wasn’t yelling.
I wasn’t even talking.
I was frozen.
Staring past my screen.
Silent. Still. Disassociated.
He walked in, snapped his fingers,
and said,
“You need to get your emotions in check.”
He said it with the same voice my stepfather used.
The one that taught me silence was safer than truth.
That was the moment the room split in half—
present and past folding into each other like a trapdoor.
I wasn’t late.
I wasn’t defiant.
I wasn’t “having a bad day.”
I was having a flashback.
A real one.
Not dramatic. Not loud.
Just suddenly seven years old
in a conference room.
He wrote me up for “emotional unprofessionalism.”
HR said I should “take some time off to self-regulate.”
I didn’t need a vacation.
I needed someone to understand that trauma
doesn’t check itself at the front desk.
I never told them what really happened.
Why would I?
This place rewards robots.
Not humans.
Not survivors.
PTSD isn’t all night terrors and screaming.
Sometimes it’s a stare that lasts too long.
A voice tone that changes your pulse.
A memory that hijacks your body
mid-spreadsheet.
I’m not broken.
I’m reacting—
to a world that looks
way too much like the one that hurt me.
But that doesn’t go in my personnel file.
What goes there is:
- “Failure to engage.”
- “Inappropriate emotional presentation.”
- “Needs improvement in resilience.”
Resilience?
You think I’m not resilient?
I show up every damn day
with a brain that begs me to stay home.
I respond to emails with hands that shake.
I smile through sirens in my skull.
And I still meet your deadlines.
I didn’t get fired.
But I stopped showing up as myself.
Because the next time I freeze,
I’ll make sure it looks like focus.
And the next time I cry,
I’ll do it in the bathroom—
with the water running.
You didn’t catch me being weak.
You caught me surviving.
