There’s this person at my job that, for the longest time, I swore was rude. I avoided them. I kept my guard high around them. My body saw them and instantly tightened — not because of anything they did, but because they reminded me of a thousand old patterns of being caught off-guard, dismissed, or blindsided.
Even my ketamine sessions tried to nudge me: “Don’t take this person personally.”
But my trauma brain? It didn’t want to hear that. It wanted danger where there wasn’t any.
Then one day, I tripped on this person, and irritation shot up through my chest. I snapped a little: “Give me a heads up next time.”
And without hesitation, they looked at me and said — gently, humbly — “I’m sorry.”
That stopped me in my tracks.
I apologized too. And it’s been sitting with me ever since.
Because the truth is:
This isn’t Byte.
This isn’t January when someone actually hit me with a car.
This isn’t my past, my trauma, my old environments where people were unsafe, unpredictable, or cruel.
This was just a human being who wasn’t trying to hurt me.
And it hit me how often my irritation is actually just a flashback disguised as a personality trait — a trauma response wearing the mask of a mood.
It’s painful to realize how many innocent people I’ve internally punished for harm they never caused. How many times my nervous system has reacted to ghosts. But it’s also freeing.
Because now I can see it.
And when you can see it, you can change it.
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