Retail therapy doesn’t cover existential collapse—but damn it helps.
It started with a candle.
Lavender-sage.
Scented like hope, regret, and someone else’s better childhood.
I wasn’t there to cry. I was there for toothpaste.
But Target don’t care.
Target will humble you between endcaps.
There I was,
minding my business in aisle 9,
when I locked eyes with a throw pillow that whispered:
“You are enough.”
And my nervous system replied:
“B*tch, since when?”
Cue the unraveling.
Full-body tremble.
Right next to a toddler licking a cart and a dad arguing with a phone charger.
I’m in a shame-spiral holding two loofahs, a journal I’ll never write in,
and a bag of discounted chocolate I’m calling dinner.
A woman in yoga pants paused, tilted her head, and asked,
“Rough day?”
I said,
“I just realized my trauma has better attendance than my family.”
She nodded. Offered me a tissue. Or maybe it was a coupon.
Because healing doesn’t wait for permission.
It hits during errands.
Under LED lights.
While a Bluetooth speaker plays “Walking on Sunshine” like it’s not a hate crime.
So I ditched the cart.
Stumbled into the parking lot like a castaway escaping aisle purgatory.
Plopped my exhausted ass on the bumper of my car,
ripped open a granola bar with the strength of a recovering people-pleaser,
and exhaled.
The ugly kind.
Snot, shivers, full release.
No filter. No cart. No audience.
And in that sacred, dented-bumper moment,
I remembered something powerful:
I made it out.
Not out of Target.
Out of that life.
The one where I swallowed it all down
and called it composure.
The one where crying in public meant failure.
Now?
It just means I finally feel safe enough to fall apart.
So yeah.
Target triggered me.
But the parking lot held me.
With a $7 notebook,
half a granola bar,
and a sky that didn’t care what I looked like crying.
And that, my friend,
is how I became a little less haunted
outside a store that sells bathrobes and betrayal scented candles.
Healing’s weird.
But it shows up.
Even if it has to follow you out of aisle 9
and into the next chapter.
Triggered in Target. Healed in the Parking Lot
I came for toothpaste—left with tears,
Faced my past near yoga gear.
A throw pillow called me “worthy”—bold.
My trauma said, “That lie’s old.”
Loofahs wept, granola cheered,
A toddler stared, the aisle cleared.
But parking lots? They caught my fall—
With coupons, crumbs, and no judgment at all.
—The Funny Phoenix, ugly crying near cart returns since 2016
