The following is a short piece I wrote back in 2022, when I began to get frustrated by the proliferation of trigger warnings in literary journals, some including very extensive lists of everything you should warn the editors about. These were all journals aimed at adults, not children, yet, to me, this is treating adults like children. The written word is unique among media in that you can immediately stop reading, whereas it is more difficult, say, to stop watching a movie, and adults are free to put down any book at any time for any reason. But literature – good literature – has always made us uncomfortable, always been a little dangerous, as it should be. If, for example, you’re told upfront before reading Gatsby that there will be someone killed by a car and another who commits suicide, you’ll spend the entire book waiting for these events, and that knowledge will color your experience, changing the entire relationship between reader and work, and taking away the power from the scenes.

Avoiding things that are difficult and challenging to us can never lead to growth, only to keep us stuck or to send us backwards. I write this not as some perfectly adjusted person, but as one who has suffered from traumatic stress to the point of it nearly killing me. It was only when I stopped avoiding the debilitating things that I began to get better, working with them instead of avoiding them. No, it is not easy and must be done carefully, and literature is the perfect medium in which to do so, allowing one to pause and reflect at any time things begin to get in any way overwhelming. It is clear, however, that these warnings are not going to go away anytime soon, and that no current literary magazine will ever publish this piece, so I have decided to do so here. (For more thoughts on this, see Literature and the Absurdity of Trigger Warnings)

Trigger Warning

by G. Tarsiscis Janetka

Warning: The following is a collection of words strung together in order to form a series of thoughts designed to elicit varying emotions which may in some way be upsetting, or delightful, or joyful, or terrifying, etc. These words are open to personal interpretation, which may elicit memories and associations, some of which may be more than completely safe and comforting. By allowing your eyes to look at these black marks on paper, and by allowing your brain to interpret them, you may learn something about yourself or others or the world, some of which may be less than completely flattering, and may, in some way, make you question deeply held beliefs, prejudices, and difficulties. These words may show the universality of human experience, inherent in which is endless suffering, and the fact that everything that comes to pass, including ourselves, must cease to be, raising uncomfortable questions about life and death and why you think it’s so important to speed so fast on the highway that you put yourself and others in danger, and why you think an ever bigger screen TV is so important, and why you can disconnect and call yourself an animal lover when eating a steak, and why any of us do any of the things that we do. By agreeing to read the following words you may find little to no value whatsoever, coming away feeling that you’ve wasted five minutes of your time that you’ll never get back, feeling that those five minutes could’ve been much better spent endlessly scrolling in search of the tiniest dopamine hit of familiarity. These words may force you to confront difficult things in your past, something the science indicates is absolutely necessary in order to grow and move beyond being trapped by them. These words may make you miss a loved one, or make you see that some of your past actions have been anything but honorable. These words may be the work of a subpar artist and make you feel gypped, which may make you feel the need to look up the etymology of the word gypped in order to see if it’s insulting to gypsies and if you should stop using it immediately and chastise yourself for ever having used it in the first place. These words may remind you that life, in all of its infinite darkness and light, is made up of an incomprehensible web of causes and conditions which lead to the appearance and disappearance of all worldly things, and that it, in no way, is predictable, and never, ever provides anyone with a trigger warning.

Note: There is no longer space for the story. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

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