When I was in my freshman year of college, I experienced post-traumatic stress for the first time. It shouldn’t have happened. There wasn’t a reason for it to happen, but it did. He never touched me and he never hurt me physically, he never even technically did anything that could be called abuse. Maybe I could have said he was harassing me, but even making the case for that would have been questionable. I allowed his actions to take place. But when I tell you I felt unsafe, I mean I felt really unsafe. I didn’t want to leave my dorm because I saw him in the dining halls just outside the Netherlands. I changed my route getting back from class because he caught me once walking on the Netherspan alone. When I had to sit in class, wondering where he would sit, I could feel myself overheating and my focus wavering. Every time now I see someone tall wearing a baseball cap, I flinch.
Last year, I got into my first relationship. I started dating a girl that I was best friends with. I thought it would be a great experience, but it wasn’t; it was toxic. Now we’re broken up and I still have to see her all the time. Seeing her reminds me of the low point I was in in my life when we were together. All last semester, we were in classes together. Now she’s still in my clubs and we share a lot of mutual friends. I can’t go anywhere on campus without seeing her. I can’t even get away from her now that we’re home. This isn’t a form of abuse. I can’t go to the Title IX offices to get her out of my life, but it is trauma that stays fresh every day. It is torture.
This relationship, while it’s over now, affects my life still. It affects my education. It affects my friendships and my life at school. This relationship has haunted me. But we don’t talk about the way that people are triggers for us. We don’t talk about the fact that things that aren’t abuse can still be trauma.
Writing Against Power 
Jess, my comment here is actually on the complete #StorytellingAsResistance project, not on this brainstorming post.
I believe sharing your work on Tumblr is wildly important for college students; you explore the boundaries of relationships in ways that expose the very real line between the desire to connect with people and the discomfort that emerges slowly when those connections aren’t healthy. This is an important conversation to start.
You piece reminded me of Martinez’s in the structure you employ. Although you did not compose an allegory, you did structure your work into separate sections, as Martinez does. One strength of Martinez’s entire piece is that she book ends her allegory with an introductory and concluding section. I think your excellent work could have been even stronger with an introductory section that framed your story. As one reader, when I got to the last paragraph where you pull in Freire, I wished I had read that first, to frame the whole work with the idea that “everyday” manipulation is not innocent; it is dehumanizing.
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