One Day Late: Why I Still Get Triggered After My Awakening

For a change, we are one day late. Essay night was supposed to be Tuesday. It is not Tuesday anymore.

And that, right there, is the trigger. Not something big. Not a betrayal, not a loss. A day. I can never manage to follow my plans, the ones I try to organise for my own life, and every time it happens something in me flares up. I thought peace was a place you arrive at and stay. It turns out it’s more like the weather.

The truth is, a lot of things trigger me. And what I’ve learned about myself — this is the uncomfortable part — is that I hold them in instead of releasing the grief or the anger. I swallow it. I’m conscious of it now, which is something, but being conscious of a thing and being free of it are two very different countries. If I had to name it in the language I’ve been learning: an unbalanced throat chakra. The energy comes up, and I close the door on it.

Because here’s what I noticed throughout my awakening: it went in order. It started from the root — finding some grounding, some place to stand. Then the sacral — expressing my creativity, which is one of the reasons this blog exists at all. Then the solar plexus, and that one cost me. I used to do a lot of impromptu actions, and I’m still paying for some of them. The mistakes I made when I acted before I thought, before I stopped and felt and breathed, before I took my decisions.

So as you see, I’m going up bit by bit — from the root towards the illumination of the crown. Right now, I think I’m in the heart. I’m working on my compassion. I’m working on love — and I don’t mean love in the movie sense, the eros sense of the word. You can love someone or something in different ways. That’s the lesson I’m sitting in.

But chakras don’t stay balanced because you balanced them once. Sometimes they go back to being unaligned, and you have to feel and know when it’s happening. Here’s my confession: before, when I got angry, I’d smoke a joint or go out with my friends. I’d tend to forget. And little did I know, the problem would still be there facing me — except the problems I tried to sweep under the carpet had multiplied, amplified, from no attention. Nowadays? I do the same thing, actually. I just changed the mask. Instead of the joint, it’s projects. I keep myself occupied. Busy is a very respectable way to hide.

What I’m actually looking for is the peaceful space — to meditate and find solutions instead of burying them.

So, is getting triggered failure? No. Triggers are there to complement the saying “everything happens for a reason.” The difference is, some people accept that phrase and stop there. And then there are others — call them spiritual, call them self-development, call them whatever you like — who go further. Triggers are there because we didn’t make peace with a certain part of ourselves, or of our ancestors. They come to teach you about yourself. The peaceful time is when you’re happy to sit with one and understand why it recurs, where it’s coming from, how it affected you in the past — and how to, not control it, but flow and adapt with it, until it changes into something healthy rather than something destructive against your own self.

I’m a work in progress. At least it’s better than no progress. Always moving forward — one day late, but still writing.