Triangle Man

Triangle man is not an imaginary friend or a hallucination or anything perceptive at a sensory level. Triangle man is how I can explain my experience and articulate the events I am going to share.

Please be warned that this piece does refer to abuse and if that will be upsetting this would be a good time to stop reading.

Freud once had an iceberg diagram that showed how the mind directed our behavior. Freud was one of the first to bring up repressed memories and how they live not in the conscious or preconcious mind but the unconscious. For the purpose of my explanation Triangle man stands at the gate of the unconscious, a gate keeper so to speak.

I first started to realize triangle man existed in college. I became a psychology major after previously being a business management major because the psyc 101 class pulled me in. That story is not unique as most psych majors (opinion) have a reason for being there. 

As I learned the content he was there.  

When I got older and struggled more and more with sobriety I knew he was there. 

When I got sober I saw him more. 

When I had children he moved in. 

Triangle man stood in front of the things I wanted to willfully believe didn’t happen and the things I couldn’t remember if I tried. 

When I left Idaho I had seen triangle man a few times. I was trying to leave the stimuli of the environments I had been in. I thought if I left that environment I could drink less and be more content. That was in a lot of ways true. But the physical distance was never going to deal with the repressed memories.

When I became a dad I began to struggle hard with anxiety. I was able to meet a counselor who spent a lot of time on me with EMDR and focused on what this triangle man was guarding. We were not trying to uncover the memories so to speak but the time period so I could move on or be at peace with whatever had happened. It helped but triangle man was still there and I wanted him gone.

I reached a good point with my therapy where the anxiety substantially decreased, I felt calmer and more confident. I thought I’d beat whatever demon triangle man was hiding. I would wonder if maybe there wasnt anything to discover after all. 

Many years had passed when I decided to get the audiobook version of The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk after my wife had read it. I was thoroughly enjoying it as I felt it was such a good piece of research into many things I was passionate about. 

And then there was a story in the book that felt like a sucker punch; like a dam breaking the story hit a nerve and let the memories triangle man was holding back came loose. 

I can’t really describe the feeling as one, it was confusing. Relief, sadness, shock; betrayal. There were memories that were clear and that were faint but they all ran together like a story.

There were memories of when I was younger

There were memories when I first entered high school

There were memories from a few years later at the ER

There were memories as I entered adulthood to remind me of my teenage years

And there were memories to remind me of those who left us way too soon.

And then there were the things I didn’t remember

And it just kept going and the world started to make sense in this messed up way. 

When the fog of the memories playing out lifted the world felt different.

And there it was, triangle mans work was done and he had essentially left the room and I didn’t see him again.

He was like something I was conscientiously and unknowingly looking for all along. He served a purpose waiting for me to be mature enough to face the moments I had seen.

He was free and I was free in a sense.