i... i really feel like im not in a good place right now and i just figured out two things which actually petrify me, so... i guess that's good? but not really. explains some things.

anyway what i mean is: today i was supposed to go to the library. i woke up, it was all good, i showered (something i struggle with lately) and then read some vile homophobic shit on twitter. like, the one slur everyone uses in bulgarian and then tries to justify it by saying "there's a difference between [slur] and homos". and my mood just deflated, i got really angry at first, i'm talking all-caps tweeting/unfollowing everyone who might use it as a slur and then getting really upset about it. that's usually my pattern for when someone makes me feel anger and i hate it.

so i've spent the day just watching "lie to me" and playing solitaire, with some food in-between. it's 8:20pm right now and i just realised that. this is it. this is why i get so upset at this word. it's a TRIGGER. it seems so simple now that i think about it but i've always wondered why it always gets me so riled up? i don't know. all i know is my father loves to shout it at people, instead of words like, for example, "trash" or "jerk" etc. aaand as we all know, i have a giant pile of daddy issues, one of them being that i'm petrified he's gonna more or less disown me if he finds out i'm 1) bi 2) one of them "bad" Transgenders and hate it when people call me a "girl" (i am not a girl. i am somewhat feminine, but i am NOT a girl). so i feel like he'd also say it to me, even though it's mostly used for men. but the point is, the word itself i don't care about, i think, i just remember his tone when he says it and his face, they say "this is the worst thing that you can ever be, even shit is better than those people" which. yeah. doesn't feel very good.

the point is. i haven't really thought about it that much because i'm usually too busy being either triggered as hell or being super low-key triggered, like water that's really hot, just below boiling but not enough to actually provoke a sudden or a harsh reaction.

like, i think most of my triggers might work that way. just this slow, slow burning on the inside, my heart rate rising up, my stomach curling in a ball, unable to just stop thinking about the thing, needing some background noise that's not music because otherwise my thoughts get too loud and i think of harming myself or my old friend self-hatred shows up and makes me feel even worse.

so, funny thing is, second thing i realised. i googled "how to identify an emotional trigger" and started reading something from psychcentral (which is, i think, actually a good site to read up on mentall illness, it has its faults because a lot of the articles are more mainstream-oriented but overall a good place to start) and, "you feel angry, but then you become frightened. your anger scared you. maybe because you know your anger is more intense than others or perhaps because you've been frightened in the past by the anger of others. maybe you're uncomfortable with anger because you have seen anger hurt others and you don't want to do that. you're likely to think about the accident over and over."

and. um. this is basically me in a nutshell every time i get angry ?? like it just disappears after a while and i get sucked in by a giant wave of shame and guilt.

and.

my father. it all goes back to him. always does.

when he was little, he would get angry outbursts and throw fits. but not like, yelling at others and things like that, but just. get red and start chocking from it. legit passing out from anger. the doctors told my grandmother that she just had to. not get him angry. let him have everything his way, or else he'd do that again and get injured. which she did.
what did it result in? this adult who has the most intense anger issues you can imagine. this adult man who growls at first, then gets red and starts yelling if something isn't the way he likes it to be. this adult man who can barely hold in his anger and if he does manage to postpone it, he gets it out at home. never actually hits anybody, no, but the yelling is enough for his kid. it's enough. i've seen him act on it a few times. once he broke the door glass from slamming the door repeatedly. once he literally punched a bathroom lamp with his fist and broke it. that's the extreme. usually it's just yelling. lots and lots of yelling of all kinds of curses. yelling, growling, threatening with violence if it's a man. honestly i don't wanna write it down, but i have a very hazy memory of when i was little. i must've been four or five, i have no idea. but i think he slapped my mother once. i don't know, i just remember hearing a slap. it was late at night, i was sleeping, then i woke up because i heard some whisper-shouting, then a slap and my mother's sobbing. i always try not to keep it away from my mind, but that's one of the things i think of when his anger comes up.

so, that's what i associate with anger. this distored image of a furious adult man who yells and in extreme cases breaks things. i don't know how you'd call it, i've thought of labeling it "emotional abuse" but. i don't think it is. i've seen this anger directed at me maybe, five times tops. and i'm 20. so that's not a lot.
i don't know the name for this but now i have actually explained it to myself why i feel like shit a bit after i'm angry so. that's something, i guess.

i don't know why i'm writing this but i feel the need for someone to read it. and. i don't know what to do. i think i'm gonna post it on tumblr and delete it a few hours later. but i'm keeping it here, on this blog, even though i write in bulgarian here. we'll see.