For those who cope with trauma, past or present, there may be a recurring time of day when you experience a heightened sense of hypervigilance, a heightened sense that something is wrong.
You may find yourself in these moments looking for evidence of what is wrong, and you may find many things wrong.
This evidence that everything is wrong might all meld together and leave you feeling privately drained and awful, even though you may still smile and appear to be your best self for everyone else.
You may find yourself secretly desperate for an elixir to help you have a little peace. And you may find you notice all of this more when you’re by yourself, where there are fewer distractions and fewer attractions.
Whenever you find yourself in this uncomfortable predicament, please remember that there is a space within yourself where you are safe. It may be just the tiniest apartment deep within yourself, but it’s yours whenever you’d like to visit.
The walls of this space are built with boundaries—not out of animosity for others but rather built out of love for yourself.
This space is here for you to just be as you are and as you aren’t, with love instead of shame.
Where you can sit on a cushion of empathy and observe all that’s right or wrong and validate each experience you’re having.
Or you can simplify your actions to simply breathing in, knowing you’re breathing in, and breathing out, knowing you’re breathing out.
You may also find comfort knowing that you are not alone here. That there are so many others like you building similar spaces, learning how to not be held hostage by circumstances and by other people’s behavior.
If you are someone who gets secretly triggered every day, I’m sending you my love—from my tiny apartment to yours.
-JLK
