I turn forty tomorrow, but I’m stuck at age 7. Nearly 33 years have passed since that day. The compartmentalization crumbled over the last 4, resulting in an almost-constant barrage of that hellish memory. When the thoughts overflow and overwhelm, uncontrollable sobbing renders me incapable of thinking clearly and functioning normally.

Sometimes I wish she had pulled the trigger. It would’ve been better than living with the nightmare that is constantly threatening to surface in the midst of my everyday mundane. (I don’t know if the gun was loaded or empty, and I’m not sure which would’ve been more cruel.)

I wish I could stop the intrusive thoughts, but I keep going back to that kitchen seat. To the surprise and shock. To the way I held my breath. To the knot in my stomach. To the look on her face. To the sound of her voice. To the way she held the gun. To the question she spewed, “Which one of you do you want me to shoot first?” To the words, “She won’t do it” that I kept silently repeating to myself. To how she said she was sick of the fighting and she couldn’t take anymore. To my sister warning me not to tell anyone or mom would go to jail. To locking myself in the school bathroom stall while I told a friend. To my friend suggesting I tell an adult. To denying it ever happened, that it was a dream. To coming home to her baking a birthday cake. To lying on my sister’s bed. To my father telling us not to talk about it because she was sorry. To how he normalized it so that I believed it was okay.

The memories won’t stop. Not when I see a gun on TV or on social media or in person. Not when I hear the sound of one being shot. Not when I run across the toy gun my daughter received as a joke for her birthday one year. The memory is always there, haunting even on my good days.

I wonder what made her think it was an acceptable form of discipline to point a gun at her daughters and threaten to shoot. I wonder why he protected her and not us.

She apologized and said she regrets it, but I can’t figure out how to forgive. Or forget. I’m stuck in that moment, wishing that it had never happened or that something had been different. I ponder what it would have been like if she had pulled the trigger or profusely apologized or somebody had come to our rescue.

When I am overcome and undone by normal life stressors, I fear myself. I live in fear that I am capable of traumatizing my children. I fear losing my loose grip on sanity. I am afraid.

I am hours away from 40. And I am seven.