The Started as a Story About Getting Pasta Sauce

I used to blame it on bullying. Around that golden age of 10 I began to experience it. A later teacher termed it a “losing a childhood spark”–when you begin to realize that things won’t always be “okay”. Being an Asian male with a high squeaky voice in a largely rural student body was an experience to say the least. Slurs became a regular substitute for my name. But at that young age, I had a very hard time letting it roll off my shoulders after the first few months. There were a few times where the hate became physical with one particular time being when someone rammed me into the ground. I got up and walked away so that no one would see me cry. I began to hate school, think there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t good enough.

Even when the bullying stopped, the fear of it continued. There would be days in my freshman year of high school that I would not say a single word. If I was silent, no one would notice me. I even overheard a couple of students behind me in one class wondering if I was mute. It was my protection, as if I had carved myself a little safe space where it wouldn’t hurt so badly. But then something happened. In my junior year I mustered up courage and joined the Quiz Bowl team. I was captain the next year. I had made friends, and, although I wasn’t going out very often, catching a chocolate shake at McDonald’s with someone every month or so was an improvement. I had teachers that I felt comfortable with, and while I wouldn’t have considered myself popular by any means, I was on an acquaintance-basis with almost everyone. And just when things were finally looking up, I fell back into my safe space.

It was the most trivial thing. An argument between my best friend led to me cutting all contact. We stopped talking–or rather I did. They reached out a few times after that argument. I never took the time. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t let myself get hurt again. That was how I justified it. That is how I still justify it now like some stubborn child. It began to expand to more people. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily?) this was near high school graduation. And so, two years ago, I graduated. My mom wanted to take pictures with me and all of my friends. I ushered her back towards the car.

I used to pride myself on being able to bottle my emotions, slipping that in during interviews and such. I could show a straight, stoic face and never get angry, even if a customer was screaming at me. At my former job, my manger even complimented me for having a cool-head. I probably wouldn’t even be writing this if that had continued.

Recently I’ve been noticing a change. I’ve been feeling that it is getting ever-so-slightly harder to push down my emotions. I get teary-eyed over the pictures of some stranger’s dead dog. I’ve been getting angry and throwing fits over the smallest things such as losing the rubber parts of my earbuds. These are two emotions that I thought I could control–that I was better than them.

I used to tell myself that I was happy this way. I was happy when I was secluded and alone, playing video games by myself every night and just putting my head down during classes as long as I got the A. I don’t want to keep doing this anymore, I don’t want to keep playing pretend. When I think about all of the time that I have wasted drowning in my misery I feel sick to my stomach. I’m fed up, disgusted with how I let other people turn me to this without fighting back. How did I let myself get to this place?