I’ve been holding on to something for a long time. A very long time.
And even as I’m sitting here writing this essay, knowing full well that I have no intention of typing out the full details of the incident, my mind is lingering there. Thinking about what happened. And how it still hurts me.
I hate to think of it. And yet once I think of it, it is hard to stop thinking of it.
Ugh.
No one knows how much this one thing is bothering me. The people closest me would be unable to guess what I’m referring to. But I know. I never forget.
I wish I would forget. Wish I would just get over it. And I’m pretty sure everyone else assumes I have. Actually, if it’s like anything else, most people never realized it bothered me in the first place. I find I flee from the biggest pains in silence. I laugh and escape. And it’s only when I’m alone, all alone on my own, that I break down and cry.
For a little bit.
And then I pull myself together and head back out into my life. Looking relatively composed. Focusing on the work in front of me. I let the work and routine pull me away from the pain for as long as I can.
Before I remember again. And it repeats.
There’s a stubbornness here, I think. Part of me refuses to let this one event — and all the pain I felt because of it — conquer me. And in that stubbornness, I refuse to voice the fears, the insecurity, and the deep sense of disappointment in so many things.
Yes, even to ask for help.
Because I don’t want to admit it hurts me. I don’t want to surrender to my misery. I want to be that person who marches away from it strong, unflappable, unfettered, unbothered.
But after a while, you really do begin to ask yourself if that’ll ever happen.