I can relate to this. All that is happening is that the memory is surfacing in pieces. You got the room piece. I think screen saver is a perfect way to describe the "container" aspect of the memory fragment of the visual of the space. Now within that memory of space, you have let surface a particular emotion-thought. This emotion-thought is what I call an "instinct" or "impulse" right now for lack of the correct or better term. It is not discussed in normal human consciousness from what I can tell because most people have not felt it. I do not really know what it is.
Because when I have flashbacked to this "impulse" it came to me as a sudden realization that although I thought I WAS actually dying, I was still "stuck" here. The moment I realized I had been at the point of death, where I actually "left my body" and was "killed" but was still here, my mind/spirit "freaked out" about coming back. It feels like a dirty trick. And every cell of my body longed for this life to have been done with. I didn't want to come back. I wanted to be done here. The depression from PTSD feels like a vestage of this unwillingness to come back and live out life after those conditions. As if when I die in this life, it will be for the second time. Rather than feeling positive for the opportunity to come back, there is a sense of being cursed, doomed, and marked for life that comes with a brush with death. Many people who have had NDE's express this, although others express more positive, angelic and gratitude feelings for a second chance. I am working on that perspective in terms of love.
(This may get too deep for some; fair warning.) I believe that consciousness is connected to our soul. Soul is our true life. It is like a light that burns brighter when we grow spiritually. It almost burns out completely when we become sociopaths and predators. Human predators' lights are so dim that they will be snuffed out completely and that person will not continue to exist as "we do." It is a terrible fate to cease to be alive at all. The remnant of the being of the evil/dark/shadow people will live hollographically and vicariously as an imprint of evil left as a mark on their victims; but their soul and free will will cease to be.
When our physical body experiences sufficient trauma, the soul "leaves" it. I believe this "impulse" you are remembering is the terrible feeling of it "coming back" into a traumatized "container" of consciousness (suddenly and when we could have just died and went to peace and "the light.")
I have felt it. It is a strong desire to not be "here" anymore and to wish to escape from experiencing life, but on such a strong scale, that it is a state-dependent emotion that one can only feel during Trauma. It leads to a thought of suicide, but we know that suicide would not take us back to the death we just nearly missed. It's like missing your flight, and getting on a small boat full of holes out of desperation is not a comparable solution. Small trauma will not induce it, not even a lot of little traumas. This is the feeling of "coming back" to life in the middle of or directly after trauma.
I am sad you are processing this one. It has been the worst thing for me to reprocess so far. I kept getting the flashback to this moment/memory until I was able to reframe and release it. I did that by accepting it and seeing it for what it was, and for connecting it to the positive of my life right now. In other words, I thought "this was the worst feeling in the world, but it led me to be here in this moment able to remember that and yet, here I am, reaching out my hand and grasping my best friend, my husband's hand and saying "yes" to life again. I felt stronger. I decided to want this life, even with the trauma in it, in order to experience love. This love is deeper because I choose it even with the price tag of staying here and being in a body that contains a ton of buried trauma that is now resurfacing.
I am willing to pay the ticket to live the rest of this life. We can't sit in the station forever. Life is asking you to decide what you are living for (truly) or else why put up with the suffering of living anymore.
I send you my love and encourage you to grab hold of whatever it is you can't live without and hold onto it with gratitude for the experience.
XOXO Muse
