Earlier I posted about the trauma of growing up with rodents in the home and something came up very commonly in the comments, the trauma of growing up with roaches in the home.

Earlier I posted about the trauma of growing up with rodents in the home and something came up very commonly in the comments, the trauma of growing up with roaches in the home. Now, roaches can come for many different reasons and typically in the home there's two different types. There's German roaches, very small, hard to get rid of. And those kinda come, they're drawn to food and also they'll be, um, kitchen dwellers. You can look under your cabinets and in the crevice of your counters and see them grouped up. Very traumatizing, very hard to get rid of. You can't leave anything out around them. These are the kind that when you pick up a bag, if you have it in the space and drop it, you'll see them scurrying away from it. And again, when you have the first type of roach, the second type is usually on the way. I usually like to say it goes flies, gnats, roaches and rats. So by the time you have rats, you've probably seen a large variety of roaches. But these German roaches, they will follow you places, they'll be in your clothes. And also they lead to what is cockroaches. Cockroaches are much bigger. These are the ones with the anxiety inducing antennas and they can grow to be very large. Now, cockroaches typically will be alone a lot of times. And maybe you'll keep sketch them in adolescence when they're small and brown, or in adulthood when they're big and black. And I want to make a point that all of these bugs have their own form of droppings and own form of sound, hissing also, often times. And even to this day, if I walk in a room and there's a roach, even if it's hidden, I can feel the presence of it. And the thing about roaches is they're much more smaller, so often times they can be peskier and be a lot more sensitive than a rodent or a rat, mice, whatever is plaguing you in the vermin species. However, with roaches, they can climb up through more small crevices, they don't have to make themselves hidden and also they're not as smart, so they'll expose themselves to you very quickly. You'll see those antennas, but as soon as you react, they can be much quicker in getting away. And they're much smaller and being able to hide. And they're much quicker in reproduction. So you'll see a lot of them once you see the first of them. The saying in my household growing up was where there is one, there is many. And in the case of bugs, that is correct. Once you see one roach, you see many. Once your neighbor has them, you have them. And a lot of times people from these types of environments will talk about how they're scared of taking roaches into different environments. And that was a big fear of mine whenever I visited friends, whenever I moved to college, because you really don't know where they may be hiding. And I do remember times when being on the bus in elementary school and up, roaches crawling out of my bag and me almost taking them to school. So it's not an unfounded fear. And years down the line, you'll think you're seeing them out the corner of your eye. It is deeply traumatizing. It is deeply shameful, because there's nobody to open up to about this and be met with empathy before shame. And also, it is just something that is a product of abuse.