Reader asks: “When triggered, how do you get rid of the feeling?”
2 min readJul 24, 2024
Four ideas. (TW for reference to sexual abuse.)
- I breathe as deeply as I can and chant to myself: “Then was then, and now is now.”
- I try to identify the feelings — and I keep the list short: shame, pain, anger, fear, guilt. loneliness.
- Then I chant to myself, “I feel (insert feeling)” until the feeling releases. Or morphs. Often, what begins as anger ends as (insert feeling). As I continue breathing, I find joy.
I told my twelve-year-old to break the pool cue in half and use the jagged end to stab each of them through the chest.
My father was last. On her own, my twelve-year-old pulled the pool cue from his torso and shoved it through his eye socket to drive it into his skull.
I sacked out on the grass to enjoy the good, clean smell of the emerging spring. This was a scent from last year. It was soft fresh dirt and new grass. It was April sun on my skin. Spring would spiral into summer, which would bring about fall. Then winter would come, to manifest as spring. Winter always became spring. Faith had less to do with the epic than it did with the miracle of time, passing.
