They’re unionizing. Demanding hazard pay and a goat-support hotline.
You ever get flashbanged by your own notifications?
Like—one second you’re opening Facebook to check on a goat meme,
and BOOM—there’s a memory from 2011
when you smiled through abuse and posted about it like it was brunch.
Even my triggers are tired.
They got schedules now.
Calendar reminders.
Group texts.
One of them just sent me a reminder that said:
“Hey, just checking in—have you cried about 7th grade yet today?”
Sometimes I think my triggers aren’t just sensitive.
They’re overachievers.
Like, “Oh you’re in a good mood? Let me fix that with a TikTok that sounds like your ex’s ringtone.”
We talk about “healing.”
But nobody mentions how healing just means
learning to coexist with a thousand tiny landmines
in your digital life, your emotional body, and your Amazon Prime recommendations.
Even meditation apps are suspect.
One told me to “let go of what no longer serves me,”
and I had a full-body flashback to every friendship where I was the unpaid emotional intern.
And don’t get me started on the group chat.
I open it like I’m disarming a bomb.
One wrong scroll and I’m back in 2015,
explaining myself to people who never deserved the explanation.
Sometimes I think my trauma has Wi-Fi.
It updates itself.
Finds new ways to glitch my nervous system.
Auto-syncs to songs, smells, usernames, and side-eyes at the grocery store.
Even my coping skills are twitchy.
I lit a candle the other night and started crying—
not because I was sad,
but because the scent was “Lavender Memories,”
and apparently, lavender and I have beef.
But here’s the thing:
If I have to live in a haunted brain
with pop-up ads from my past,
you better believe I’m charging rent.
I can’t block every ghost.
But I can give them names, punchlines,
and a merch line that says:
“Triggered, but hilarious.”
Because if even my triggers have triggers,
then I guess it’s only fair
that my humor has claws.
And teeth.
And a microphone.
Even My Triggers Have Triggers
That song? That scent? That f*cking chair?
My triggers trigger from thin air.
It’s trauma-ception, PTSD roulette—
My past plays games I never set.
I blink, I breathe, I freeze in Target—
And somehow laugh mid-aisle like market.
It’s messy, true. But now I joke—
Cause humor’s what I light and smoke.
—The Funny Phoenix, ducking trauma like dodgeballs
