triggers

we all have triggers. reminders. 
they can be good and bad. 

when i frost a cake, i think of my mom. 
when i smell roses i always think of funerals. 
thai food reminds me of my brother. 
oreos and justin timberlake equal my bestie. 


it's automatic. your senses pull the trigger and memories catapult to the forefront of your conscious.  

i had a trigger the other week and it sent me spiraling into fear. with a heap of coaxing i calmed down enough to be rational. the trigger wasn't a spider web or tentacles {because les-be-honest, spiders and octopi freak me out} but something as simple as mr. k walking out the door. 

i lost it. 

i'm certain every adult feared being left at the grocery store as a child-- that's why you kept a death-grip on the shopping cart or mom's purse. for me that fear never went away. i wasn't worried about being left somewhere; i was afraid of being left entirely. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

you learn to adjust. siblings get married, friends go on missions,  life goes on. you eventually acclimate with time until suddenly you're the one up-rooted.  after a bewildering first week in the real world, frantically searching for solid ground, you begin that process of laying roots in friends. those relationships that started off so simply evolve into your anchor-- they keep you grounded and sane and happy. 

no one ever tells you that you have to dig those roots up one day.  often you have warning about the impending digging-up process--i knew well in advance of my sister moving to germay, my brother going to residency, my bestie moving to new mexico, my friends marrying their sweethearts. but even with the knowing beforehand, it's hard.  

the very worst thing is a sudden up-rooting. without warning you're alone. the giant fear of abandonment has happened.  it strips your roots to the core and you feel naked, humiliated, and raw. you can patch those roots up with sunlight and summer rain but it's never really the same. there's the residual damage and a terror of ever laying down deep, intimate roots again. 



mr. k simply walked out the door {to go next door} and it triggered that childhood fear of being abandoned. that raw ache of being walked away from. my heart literally hurt remembering those feelings in a rush and i choked on old grief and pain. 

he was obviously confused at the state i was in upon his return. he stroked my hair and told me to let it out. and sometimes that's what you have to do-- allow yourself to feel everything the trigger brings and then let it go. 


"people have scars in all sorts of unexpected places. like secret roadmaps of their personal histories. diagrams of all their old wounds. most of our wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. but some of them don't. some wounds we carry with us everywhere and though the cut's long gone, the pain still lingers."
-meredith grey