I remembered something small and it ruined an hour

Dear Delyara, I hate how memory works sometimes. It wasn’t a major memory. Not trauma in the way people imagine trauma. Just one old humiliating moment, one sentence, one look, one piece of emotional evidence from years ago that somehow still knows how to find me when I’m slightly tired and not fully defended. For the next hour I felt different. Smaller. More self-conscious. Less free. It’s amazing how long certain moments live in the body after they’ve stopped living anywhere else.