In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.
There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.
I realized what happened after about two seconds.
The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.
For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.
I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.
This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.
Another thing: my sister was watching a tv show, and an actor with the same voice pitch as my dad’s came onscreen. I heard the voice and froze, choking on my own breath while mentally checking everything on my phone and in my room, making sure that none of my possessions were going to be taken because I had done something “wrong.” My dad was on a business trip in India.
Literally I once almost cried walking into my job at a craft store because they had orange streamers out. It reminded me of Halloween and that holiday has traumatic associations for me. Crying over a streamer seems completely silly without context, but you never really know what it may make another person think about.
I almost burst into tears at work one morning because someone was eating toast and the smell reminded me of being in hospital, where they would always come around and ask us what we wanted for breakfast and we’d have toast. Mine was with strawberry jam. I can’t stomach the thought of strawberry jam now just thinkng about it, but the toast smell trigger doesn’t make much sense because I have eaten it at home plenty of times since being in hospital. Maybe it’s just because it was in a public/unexpected place.
But yes, I have gotten upset over toast. And also the beeping sound a printer was making because it sounded like hospital machinery. I so wanted to go over there and smash the thing to make it stop.
