Sudden Bloom

I don’t understand why it happens that way. I really don’t. It’s like someone flicks a switch and the memories choke me out. Things that I don’t let get under my skin, they burrow in as soon as they see that I’m vulnerable… and then they rip their way out again, leaving me silent, watery-eyed, and unable to paste that fake smile on with so much ease.
I was at work, and heard a conversation of my coworkers, and it made me think of an event that I don’t exactly keep a secret, but I don’t entirely feel like posting on the Internet yet. Usually when I think of that Incident, I glue to the end of the memory “it has made me who I am today, and was a necessary event to change me. It is also in the past, and thus has no holding on what you do today” and I smile and shrug off the negativity that surrounds those memories.
But then, when I go a long time without thinking about it, or especially if I have had a lot of fun and been relatively carefree, the memory will strike me on the spot, and leave me motionless. My eye will start twitching. My teeth grind. My hands shake with anger and regret. And suddenly, if faced with someone who wants to torment me, I become less passive, even looking into their eyes and telling them to go to Hell and be prostrated by cast iron spikes. I can become unbelievably dark and creepy– which explains why, after freshman year in high school, I changed. I didn’t want to be myself anymore. I would look in the mirror and wish that my face was gone. I would even secretly contemplate using my father’s shotgun while I was home alone– but decided I wouldn’t hurt my father or step-mother, who I knew loved me, by doing something like that.
I have never tried to hurt myself physically, because I know I wouldn’t have the guts to finish what I start, and I don’t want to be covered in the scars of my cowardly failures. I would feel like a piece of paper with markings on it– markings that would never fully erase. Already, I felt like that– and any addition to those markings, ones that everyone else could see, at that… No. I didn’t want that. So I hid behind a smile and what everyone wanted me to do. Even now, I am not fully who I want to be, because I am too afraid of my family’s criticism.
There is more to this, but I am going to put it separately. It is a novel of its own, really, and with how close it is to my heart, I want to give it a separate face– away from my depression. I might not post it tonight– but if anyone is curious… Just ask me about Zaiyo.