Hello, friends. Seeing the incredible Amanda Gorman perform at the inauguration yesterday made me ache to write and perform poetry, something I used to do pretty often in high school. My skills are rusty AF but I wrote this today about the ways that Trump triggers me (in the literal, psychological sense, not the “own the libs” sense) as a survivor of childhood emotional abuse. He’s a super triggering guy; it is normal and okay if you found him unusually upsetting for a president – or even unusually upsetting for a despot – and it is normal and okay if you’re celebrating Joe’s win partly because it means you don’t have to walk around feeling triggered all the time anymore. (Content note for what’s to come: mentions of emotional abuse and yelling.)
it feels surreal to breathe again
in the absence of the angry men