When did your world go quiet?

[PalominoOrGreyOrChestnutOrBay]

inspired by a tiktok trend recently, just thought it might be an interesting thread. I’m a regular poster not a journalist or anything like that (MNHQ can verify!).

When did your world go quiet? Basically, what was a time you got a fright and time seemed to stop or go quiet?

mine was I was on my horse and he decided to rear up, over concrete ground, and I felt him wobble back. As soon as I felt that first tilt backwards everything sort of went quiet and it was like an out of body experience (not a good one!). I couldn’t hear anyone around. I just remember the last thing I thought was along the lines of this is it im about to die and it was like everything was in slow motion. Luckily it was all ok but that split second was easily the scariest moment of my life and my world completely stopped.

So, when did your world go quiet?

My 7 year old choking on a sweet, took what felt like minutes to get it out.
Walking round the corner of a building and colliding with a man in a balaclava with a pistol in his hand, he looked into my eyes and i thought i was going to be shot. He shoved me against the building and ran, he had just shot a man.

I took a gap year and went travelling in Canada. I had a job in a hotel and was living in staff accommodation with some great roommates. We used to go hiking up mountains.

One day, I was off and they were all working and I decided to solo hike. Got the shuttle bus up to the trail and off I set.

I got cocky about 3 hours in and wandered a little bit off the trail to take pictures with my camera, though had a general idea of where the trail was. I was in the woods on a mountain in the middle of fucking nowhere at this point.

I then saw a black bear a few hundred metres ahead, and froze. In my panic I struggled to find the trail. Eventually I did and ran for a little while. Eventually I stopped and promptly threw up everywhere before carrying on my way. I remember hearing the odd noise as well and thinking the bear was stalking me but I may have been imagining it.

The fear genuinely traumatised me, and I still want to slap 19 year old me.

When I choked, as an adult.
It was absolutely terrifying, I was at a restaurant with a friend and a piece of steak got stuck in my throat, it was so different to anything I’ve ever experienced, I realised I couldn’t breathe at all, I was trying to get my friends attention, I could see people around me but couldn’t hear anything, it felt like hours but after about 20 seconds my friend noticed and smacked me a few times on the back, the steak shot out. I remember being really angry that lots of people had seen I was choking and done nothing. This was completely irrational as they probably hadn’t even realised what was happening!

Nowhere near as awful as some of these stories.

As a very nervous novice skier standing on the edge of a narrow, steep and icy slope and seeing a huge male skier above me hit a piece of ice and come straight at me. There was no way he could avoid me and nowhere I could go.

(He came straight into me, grabbed me by the waist and took me down with him. At the bottom of the steep icy bit he released me with a polite "Pardon Madame" and skied off. I still don't know how he managed that and how neither of us ended up badly hurt.

Many things. All trauma, rape and resulting baby loss related. I did a lot of watching from the ceiling out of body experience. Time stopped. Often.

This thread is so sad

My experience was when I found my dad in a very poor state dead on the floor. It took me what felt like hours to register it was him & he was gone

I've had the slow motion and quiet for a time thing twice that I can remember - once in a car crash, time slowed down moments before the crash and everything went into slow motion - the car spinning and even my heart seemed to beat slower. The other time was many years ago when I witnessed someone falling from a great height - I could see them falling and there was nothing I could do to stop it, I was convinced they were going to die (they didn't).

Getting beaten … I was on the ground, blood running down my face, all I could see was red. Everything was red, I thought I was going to die, and I kind of wanted it done with. Part of my brain shut off, no sound, no real pain (as my ribs were breaking) - just quiet and red, and then nothing.

So Poignant.
😥
Sorry for the loss of your Husband .

Five months ago when having DS by emergency c-section. He'd just been born, and the silence was deafening.

I couldn't see him but knew the nurses/midwives were doing something. I remember thinking that this can't be it, that it can't end like this. It felt like it took forever to hear him cry.

He's a happy healthy little boy today, but I can't look at those first early photos of him without that feeling of rising panic.

💐💐💐

im so sorry everyone has been through so many awful times. I think I will ask MNHQ to put a trigger warning on this thread as I don’t want anyone to be upset by it.

sending hugs to everyone x

I also disassociated when I found out I was pregnant at 17. Very weird experience. The whole day I couldn’t really hear anything. I remember being zoned out at the family dinner. I was like that until I had my abortion (awful circumstances, not SA but still bad) 3 weeks later. It was such a relief. I hated every second of that feeling.

@NotQuiteUsual @ChronicOverthinkr thank you. I didn't know that.

When the Dr said the words "I'm so sorry there's no fetal heartbeat" when my baby stopped moving at 39+3.

I was Raped at 13 by 3 gang members and it was recorded and sent round most schools in South London and our whole borough.
when Bluetooth was just becoming a thing and you could send videos in seconds.

The thing is I knew they recorded it, but I didn't think they'd show people what they had done.

I recieved a phone call the next morning of my "best friend" saying "can you tell every one it's you on that video cause people think it's me and I ain't a slag". was actually that best friend who arranged the attack because she wrongly thought I fancied her boyfriend.
Must of been around 15 years ago now but I remember when I got that call it felt like my life was finished.

I felt very embarrassed people knew, and the worst part was this was when "gang culture and postcode wars" were really setting off, and living on a council estate where these boys and girls sort of all flocked together. My life for a few years was over. I had no support from family, the police, camhs, counselling services, school nothing.
I just had to get on with it. Sorry to de rail your thread Op, but that still makes my heart and head feel cold to this day. It wasn't the attack or the pain of it. It was the after effects for me. Still is now.

Very recently actually. Stood in pets at home of all places, bumped into a friend and she told me that a mutual friend of ours had kept her cancer battle secret and it was now stage 4, and they were at the end of the road with all they could do for her. It’s was this barrage of information all at once, I didn’t know she had cancer, I didn’t know she had been through months of treatment without telling anyone, I didn’t know it was no longer working, I didn’t know she only had weeks left. It felt like years worth of info was drowning me all at once and I couldn’t process it, I totally zoned out, couldn’t take anything in. She passed away just over a week later. Sometimes when the thought of her catches me off guard it all goes slow again, it’s like my brain just can’t accept it all. So many questions, so many things I wish I’d been able to say to her. I miss her.

Many of these responses have made me cry. Thank you all for sharing.

When drs were trying to get my post birth haemorrhaging to stop but I kept bleeding. I remember surgeons hovering/ talking loudly over me and all I could see was my husband holding my newborn baby - terrified in the corner. I asked him to come to me and said- please call my mother and ask her to pray for me. I still don’t know what came over me to say those words. His eyes were full of terror. But it felts like time had stopped

It’s a shocking and distressing thread. So much trauma and pain recalled here

I’m so sorry for all the people who have been through terrible things.

I have had two such moments. One was a road accident similar to those upthread. But one was actually euphoric, and actually quite ridiculous on this thread of real things. But, in any event, it’s when I hit a hole in one. I knew from the start of the second my club hit the ball how and where the ball was going to arc and land. I had absolute certainty from that point. And time slowed down: I watched the ball travel really slowly through the air, already with a huge smile on my face, and land plop in the hole. All so calm and serene and intimate and private and joyful and “right”. With hindsight, every little thing had been perfect - never happened before or since.

Poor you…
I know what it’s like to get a beating- ( from relative) It just appears to go on for ever.
It’s awful.
Ringing ears, the fat lip, the cracked tooth, the blows that rain down. ( Child at time)
I feel angry about it now-
Yes, the “ Red black” feeling, and the bared teeth and crazy eyes of the person doing the hitting/ kicking.
The stiffness and moving very slowly out of the ball on the floor one instinctively curls into, hands over head

Never had a bone broken though so yours was far worse.
Hope you are OK now.

I actually had another moment that I’ve just remembered about. It’s horse related again.

I remember my pony stumbling and going down and somehow flipping forward with me on her back (we weren’t even jumping or doing anything dangerous, just riding in the field and she lost her footing in a ditch!) and the last thing I thought was I wonder what’s it going to be like to be crushed? Everything went in a blur and suddenly I was standing up and I was fine. I don’t know what exactly happened, I remember screaming but nothing coming out and it felt like I zoned out and I wasn’t there. One minute she was going down and the next minute I was standing up. I have NO idea how I wasn’t seriously hurt that day. I think she narrowly avoided me but I dread to think of the outcome if she had landed on top of 8 year old me.

I was in the post office with small DC when there was an armed raid. We were taken by staff into a safe room almost immediately but for those 90 seconds I was nearly paralysed just trying to put the LOs behind me. (Nobody hurt in the end just cash taken).

Years later if I ever say "what are the chances of x" they go " yeah mum remember the post office!"

6 weeks ago when we were told my partner has terminal cancer and has only weeks to live.

On a plane with 'brace, brace, brace' being shouted as we descended