That is post traumatic stress. I suffered the same stuff after my father hit me three times in an argument. I would drift off and relive the fight in my mind when I was doing orinary stuff. I avoided contact with my father until the immediate stress of the fight faded in my memory. Other things that were ugly that happened because of my father's temper when I was younger and throughout my life started coming back when I was 42 and I had no control over the grief and anger. They say that sometimes that happens. You can be going along and somewhere around midlife ugliness that was abusive starts to come back to haunt you. That is when you have to deal with it. It isn't a matter of saying that it happened and accepting it and moving on. Your subconscience has a different idea. It is far better to face it on your terms than to let it eat at you. You are experienceing something that won't go away on it's own. Your family would not be better off without you. YOU will be better off without the feelings those memories give you. Your family loves and needs you and eventually those feelings will fade if you deal with them and get the help of someone you can talk to that is a professional trained in Post traumatic stress. Don't let that brute rob you of the rest of your life by causing you to relive the abuse. He has taken too much of your peace of mind already. Don't let him brutalize you anymore. Please find someone who will listen and let you talk about all of the ugliness. I know you don't want to but you have to get it out of your head and heart and wash it out of your soul. I talked and cried until I didn't have anything that I hadn't said a dozen times. I talked about every slap and every nasty mean word. I talked about every beating I watched my father give my mother. I talked about loosing my hearing from a slap to my head for weeks. I talked about the guilt of hateing and loving the same person. I talked about not knowing it was abuse until years later. I talked about being forced to accept appologies before I felt forgiveness in my heart, just to keep the peace. I can tell you that it did work. The nightmares that had begun stopped. The anger subsided and the ugliness didn't touch my life daily. I had not lived with my father for years. All it took was hearing him yell at me to trigger all of the pain I had been storing up and pushing back for over thirty five years. It will hurt while you are doing it, but with help from a professional who is trained in post traumatic disorder, it will get better.
