whatever triggers you is only trying to set you free.

"you always need to be the one talking at the table, Nush"

i usually put a lot of effort into my essays. i sit with an idea for almost a week, write pointers on my obsidian (goated software i love it so much) at odd hours, forget half of them, remember them again in the shower, and only then compile it all together into something i’m willing to publish.

today was different. something happened and i just felt like putting this out impulsively. it’s not a crazy analysis but maybe you needed this today.

so yeah. hey.

my mom calls me every day. not for anything urgent. usually just to say we should have dinner together as a family. it’s less a request and more a small daily ritual she’s appointed herself keeper of. so tonight, regular monday, nothing special, we all sat down like she asked.

i was mid-sentence about something, i don’t even remember what anymore, when my dad said something in marathi that translates roughly to “just keep it shut for once, you always need to be the one talking at the table.” then he added an oversmart little comment after, the kind that’s designed to get a laugh out of the room at my expense, delivered with that specific smugness he saves for when he thinks he’s landed a good one.

i excused myself to the kitchen. said i needed water. i didn’t need water. i needed somewhere to not be looked at, because i was teary eyed and i didn’t want anyone at that table to clock it. maybe it’s my period, i thought, standing there. maybe i’m just being dramatic about a joke. maybe i’m disregarding my own trigger by even calling it one. but the kitchen, the same kitchen that has fed me my whole life, didn’t feel familiar in that moment. it felt like it was closing in, like the walls had opinions too. what should have been the most known room in the house turned into a spiral, and i stood in it feeling anxious and stripped, like something had been taken off me that i didn’t get to choose to remove.

i came back out and finished dinner like it was a chore, something i’ve learnt to protect myself from unnecessary triggers. but somedays, a girl’s just tired, and so you forget to uphold all of those defense tactics and let your walls down. anyways, went to my room quickly after. it was a small comment, technically. i’d still lost my appetite completely.

it was never really about being told to be quiet. it’s what happens right before i speak, every single time. a small, fast calculation. will this be heard, or will this be used against me. will he actually listen, or is he just letting me finish so he can tell me i’m wrong more thoroughly. it’s not always yelling. it’s a raised eyebrow, a half laugh, a “haan haan, bol” that already sounds like it’s found the hole in my argument before i’ve made it. i’ve learned to expect the mockery before the sentence is even out of my mouth, which means i’m rarely actually saying the sentence at home. i’m performing a smaller, safer version of it there, pre-edited for his approval.

and then i go outside my house and do the exact opposite. i talk too much to strangers, overshare with people who barely know my last name, keep expressing and expressing until i’ve said more to a room of half-familiar faces than i said at my own table all week. it took me a while to see the connection. if i can’t finish a sentence at home without bracing for it to be used against me, i’ll go find rooms elsewhere where being heard doesn’t cost me anything. except overcorrecting isn’t the same as healing. talking more to people who don’t matter yet isn’t proof i’ve made peace with being unheard by the one person i keep wanting to hear me. it’s just the same hunger, fed in the wrong direction.

i used to think that flinch meant something true had been said about me. that if the words didn’t land somewhere real, they wouldn’t have made my chest do that drop-and-tighten thing. very intuitive logic. also, i’m starting to think, very wrong.

and even the doubting was part of the pattern. the “maybe i’m just hormonal” and “maybe i’m overreacting to a joke” was its own quiet way of doing his job again, this time without him even in the room. discrediting myself before anyone else got the chance to.

there’s an idea i heard recently that a trigger isn’t proof of anything happening in the room right now. it’s more like a switch that was wired a long time ago, in a house you don’t live in anymore, and something today just happened to be shaped exactly like the hand that used to flip it. the trigger doesn’t come to warn you or protect you. it comes to show you where you’re still not free. that’s the whole function of it. not a threat, a map.

so tonight, at my own table, over food i barely tasted, i realised the “keep quiet” wasn’t a verdict on whether my thoughts were worth hearing. it was just a sentence, said the way he’s said it a hundred times, that i’ve been quietly building a courtroom around since i was a kid. and i’ve been both the prosecution and the only person showing up to argue my own case.

the sharpest thing i can say about it is this. every time i pre-edit myself before speaking, i’m not protecting myself from his criticism. i’m just doing his job for him, for free, in advance.

a few things i want to actually hold onto from tonight:

the fear of being mocked into silence is not the same as actually being wrong. those are two completely different facts wearing the same face.

when you flinch before you’ve even finished a sentence, that flinch is data about your history, not a verdict on your point.

you can love a house and still feel unsafe speaking at its table. both things are true and neither cancels the other out.

being told to be smaller doesn’t require you to comply, it just requires you to notice the ask.

so here’s where i land, actually land, not just observe.

the choice isn’t between feeling it and not feeling it. the emotion showed up, that part’s done, i don’t get a vote on that. the actual choice is whether i let it drive from here. i can be teary in the kitchen and still walk back out steady. i can notice the flinch and still choose not to hand it the wheel for the rest of the night, or the week, or however long i usually give these things to run my mood.

and that’s not me suppressing it or pretending the comment didn’t land. it’s me clocking it, letting it exist for exactly as long as it needs to, and then not building a whole identity around it by dinnertime tomorrow. this isn’t just about my dad and the table. it’s the same move for anger, for resentment, for jealousy, for guilt, for whatever version of this shows up next week wearing a different face. the emotion arriving was never the problem. the problem was always mistaking its arrival for a life sentence.

so tonight what i’m actually doing differently is this. i’m not arguing with the flinch, and i’m not obeying it either. i’m just letting it sit there until it gets bored and leaves, the way things do when you stop feeding them urgency. that’s the whole shift. not fixed. not healed. just no longer confused about who’s supposed to be driving.

damn i’m jus trynna be him

that’s growth, i think. quiet, undramatic, doesn’t look like anything from the outside. just a version of me who felt the same old thing and didn’t let it write the rest of the night.

yours unapologetically too much,
Nush <3