Triggered, no like for real.

I heard a noise. I still don’t even know what it was. The dogs began barking and my anxiety flew away with no respect for the fact that I had things to do.

Going, Going, Gone…

My train of thoughts decided I was about to be killed by an armed intruder, I wouldn’t be able to protect my wife so she would be dead too. Then like a bolt of lightning I thought oh my God, what would happen to the boys!? Thoughts flying at 90 mph soared through every relative we have and if they could even take one of them. Excuses came up for each one of them. Then I began to cry because oh my God this isn’t fair to them, they have been through so much already.

My Imagination escaped…

I imagined them ending up back in foster care, separated and never having a family together again.

I imagined them locked up in prison for most of their lives. Addicted to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope with another set of parents failing them so entirely.

I imagined them fathering a bunch of children with a bunch of women. Even worse than that, never following through as a father to any of them.

I imagined them becoming their birth mother or father and doing all the terrible things that had been done to them.

I imagined them dead because, well what mother of a black child hasn’t imagined he will be killed for no reason but I digress.

Then I realized, as I was curled up in a ball crying my eyes out that I was the only noise in the house. The dogs were no longer barking. There was no intruder; there was no death, no new trauma to any of us. Just me, a mess, because of a triggering event.

Experiencing these things as I do I can only imagine what my kids go through with each trigger. They have so many triggers, many we have yet to even uncover. Some people think this is insane. I can’t quite agree because I just had an anxiety attack when I heard a noise.