All right, folks, take your seats, because class is now in session! Let’s have a little talk…
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s Saturday, but learning is fun.
I’ve had seven surgeries in my lifetime and will probably have many more in the future. And one such surgery, which happened about nine years ago, involved really fun (*sarcasm*) things like tubes that are shoved up your nose and end up in your stomach (I know, I didn’t think it was possible either until they did it), eight gallons of really disgusting fluid, pain, lots of pain, and the direct order that I had to evacuate every single bit of food that was inside me.
And that was before the surgery even began!
After the surgery, I had to stay in the hospital for about a month.
And I was on what’s called a clear-liquid diet.
What’s a clear-liquid diet?
For this particular hospital:
Water, Jello, Popsicles, and Soup Broth.
A meal that was delivered to my hospital room three times a day.
That’s all I was allowed to eat.
For those of you who enjoy doing math: I was in the hospital for a month, which is roughly 30 days. I had to eat this meal three times a day. That’s 90 bowls of soup broth, 90 containers of Jello, and 90 Popsicles. Ninety times I had to eat these things. In the span of a month. 90.
Which means that nine years later, I am actually physically unable to eat these three items without vomiting. It’s a sensory trigger.
So why didn’t I talk about this from the beginning instead of enduring four death-threats, six unfollows, and nineteen messages/comments (not including the death threats and the ones that just said ‘Popsicles, Jello, Soup Broth’ over and over again)?
Well, there’s two reasons.
A.) I don’t have to. People don’t ever have to explain why something is triggering to them. Once they say that it is, it should just be a given.
B.) The above comment is right. I am a disability advocate. And part of that advocacy includes advocating on behalf of people with triggers. And so, you’ve all been part of a social experiment for the past few hours - an experiment to see how people react when they see that someone has really bizarre triggers (out-of-context).
And I’m a bit sad to say that many of you have failed. Even other people with triggers and/or other advocates.
So listen because this is really important:
I know that triggers are a sensitive subject and I know that there are people out there who do joke about them.
But there are even more people out there who have triggers that seem really bizarre and even silly.
You cannot invalidate those triggers.
You cannot assume that someone is joking, you cannot assume that they’re mocking other people with triggers that are more commonplace or ‘sensible’, you cannot assume that they are anything less than genuine.
If someone tells you that they have a trigger, you need to believe them, no matter how bizarre it might seem.
