Reasons I have experienced trauma

A McSweeney’s-style list (read: McSweeney’s did not want to publish this, but in the Internet age, #selfpublishing #FTW. Yeehaw!)

Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash

Donald Trump’s presidency;

The global COVID-19 pandemic;

The lack of closure in the Sopranos finale;

The time I got fired over Skype by a boss who said that the edits I had suggested to something he wrote six months earlier made him “feel so alone”;

The time a colleague who had a habit of wearing too-tight jeans and resting his hands in a genital-framing position called me a control freak, and then my boss set up a mediation meeting with HR, during which said colleague was invited to deliver a monologue about what a control freak I was, and I had to just sit there and listen;

Wearing a bra for approximately eight hours a day nearly every day of my life for over three decades, until the onset of the aforementioned pandemic, when I let those babies hang loose;

The time I flew to the wrong San Jose (wanted: Costa Rica; flew to: Cali);

The job right out of college where our success was measured in terms of “productivity points” and people said things like “let’s double click on that idea”;