Ten years after helplessly holding Tom Murphy in his arms, Ben Crawford was reliving the trauma. After falsely being accused of murdering his own five-year-old son, Ben Crawford was released from prison in 2017 for good behavior. When Ben got upset he was afraid to be around his family because he behaved like a monster. The noise his kids Abby and Natalie would make would agitate him so much her would storm out of the house to keep himself from hurting them. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 9

Nighttime offered no relief—his sleep was constantly interrupted by nightmare of finding Tom in the forest in a pool of his own blood. He also had horrible flashbacks and dreaded falling asleep and often stayed up for most of the night drinking. In the morning, his wife Christi, would find him passed out on the living room couch, and she and the girls would have to tiptoe around him whole she made them breakfast before they left for college and graduate school.  #RyanPhillippe 2 of 9

Ben was upset by how difficult it was to feel any real affection for his wife, even though her letter had kept in alive in his cold prison cell. Ben went through the motions of living a normal life, hoping that by faking it he would learn to become his former self again. However, you never know when you will be assaulted by horrible memories again and you have no way of telling when they will stop. Traumatized people have a tendency to superimpose their trauma on everything around them and have trouble deciphering whatever is going on around them.  #RyanPhillippe 3 of 9

When Ben would see other fathers at the park playing with their son’s, he would sometimes go look to see may if it was Tom. He also felt like the image of his dead son was following him and haunting him, as if someone was placing boys who looked like his son in his path to upset him. Even if Ben was having a good day, a time to the mall might remind him of the Christmas he found his son dead, and he would get sad and shut down.  #RyanPhillippe 4 of 9

When we think of our families, we want to think of them as safe havens in a heartless World of uncivilized people. Ben never talked about how the murder of his son, but he would sometimes have explosive rage that would stun his family. Ben’s loyalty to his dead son was keeping him from living his own life, it had rendered the rest of his life irrelevant. He felt emotionally distant from everyone, as if his heart were frozen. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 9

**And when Ben looked in the mirror to shave, he hardly recognized himself. Instead, he recalled being questioned by the police, being kidnapped and tortured by his neighbor Kevin, and everyone accusing him of a crime he did not commit instead of trying to find the real killer. Ben would think about how his such much have screamed from the blows to the head before he died and the pain he must have felt, as his body fell to the ground. After you experience something so unspeakable, how do you learn to trust yourself?  #RyanPhillippe 6 of 9

Is it any wonder, then, that Ben Crawford was so traumatized, by the death of someone he loved so dearly, that he resorted to using drugs, alcohol, and self-mutilation to block out the unbearable memories? How can you surrender to an intimate relationship after you have been brutally violated? One of the hardest things for traumatized people to do is confront their shame about the way they have behaved during a traumatic episode. Ben was so haunted by the shame of how he felt and the fact that he was helpless to save the life of his son that he became terrified, dependent, and enraged because he was flooded with memories of his dead son.  #RyanPhillippe 7 of 9

The soul of the World shows itself most immediately with the presence of everyday things. It is possible to catch an immediate glimpse of the soul in things. There have been times, or I shall say there was a time when I saw the World as a living being. It was a very simple event. I was sitting in my room alone, writing at my desk, when before my eyes, the World was changed. There was a flow of living light that was in some mystery way not separate from me, but like part of my own being. Inner and outer were indistinguishably one.  #RyanPhillippe 8 of 9

The next day I got a call from a security guard saying he saw my son walking out of the store carrying a bottle of cranberry juice. Immediately, I tore home from work to see him for myself, but was pulled over by the CHP. I explained my situation and was let go with a warning. Knowing my son was alive and well, I am not sure how, but it gave me the hope and courage to live. I stopped drinking, smoking, and stopped cutting myself, and I knew that one day I would see him and hold him in my arms again. And one day, I happened to hear him call out to me, and there he was knocking at my door. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 9