Hotdog🌭
There are moments when trauma does not return through flashbacks or tears.
Sometimes, it returns through the smallest things.
For me, it was a hotdog.
I grew up eating it since childhood. It was normal, comforting, familiar. But after my mother passed away, I suddenly could not eat it anymore for almost two years. I never fully understood why. My body and mind just rejected it.
Recently, I went through another painful chapter in life. The kind of pain that felt heavy, familiar, and emotionally exhausting. And for the first time after years, I found myself eating hotdog again while thinking about my mom.
That moment made me realize something about trauma.
Trauma is not only about what happened to us.
It is also about what stayed inside us afterward.
Our brain connects memories to foods, smells, songs, places, and routines. Sometimes we avoid certain things not because we hate them, but because they carry emotions we were not ready to face again.
Maybe healing is not forgetting.
Maybe healing is learning how to sit beside the memory without running away from it anymore.
And maybe love stays in the smallest things,
even in a simple meal we once shared with someone we deeply miss.