Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Alone

My eyes flash open and I jolt forwards, a scream tearing out of my throat and echoing around my room. I can't remember what I dreamt, only that it was too terrifying to think about. I can hear the scream echo in the garage outside my room, out its open door and into the poolroom. It continues for minutes until I have my mind under control.
I'm half expecting someone to run out to my room and ask what is wrong, but the rational part of me knows that won't happen. My younger brother in the room next door sleeps like a log and is dead to the world. My father is mostly deaf; he wouldn't have been able to hear it. My mother....she doesn't really care. My older brother is sleeping, having just finished unpacking the last of his things into our spare room, where he will stay until he moves out.  Again.
I cuddle in a ball, crying softly and thinking of how badly things have gotten so far. I know none of them understand the pain I'm going through, day after day and night after night. I don't even remember what started it, but it continued to grow like a ball of snow rolling down a snow-covered hill, growing bigger and bigger and spinning out of control. Days have turned into weeks, weeks to months, months to years.
At first, it was the emotions, the feelings that I bottled up to hide my pain. I hid it for months until it couldn't be contained anymore. After many emotional breakdowns that I hid from the world came the anxiety of people realizing that something was wrong. Having to constantly pretend that everything was fine put an emotional and physical strain had my head and body hurt, and often I cried myself to sleep.
Then came the anxiety attacks, small ones that happened in public but I brushed off as stress and lack of sleep. But those grew and became panic attacks that struck hard and fast, relentless in every way possible. Small things set me off, the sound of a song, the touch of a hand on my shoulder on a bad day. Having people say things that reminded me of good times, or of bad times that haunted me.
And when still no one at home realized that I was slowly breaking, the pain became intolerable. I heard of ways that people would receive pain, of causing themselves harm. So one day I had decided to try it. After a giant put-down from my mother, I locked myself in my room, crying. I wanted to have everything stop, to have things just calm down and I didn't want this to keep happening. I grabbed a picture frame and broke the glass. With a trembling hand, I put it to my skin and pressed down.
After that first time, I became scared of people finding out. But one small lie that they believed, and I quickly succumbed to the impression that no one would figure it out. It was at first once every few months, only when I couldn't handle it. Then about once a month, then once a week, then almost every other day.
And it didn't get better. Everything became worse. The stress of having to hide gaping wounds from sight and pretending to the world that my life was fine fell on my shoulders like a heavy bag, pushing me farther and farther into the pits of despair. At times I wanted to die, and I did try, yet something kept stopping me from succeeding. So I suffered through the pain. But I had no help at home, no one who could convince Her that my problems weren't figments of my imagination, that they were real. That the depression and anxiety I was suffering from, that she made worse, was an actual thing that I could not handle by myself.
But here I was, with no help, lying in a cold bed, crying. Because I knew that no matter how hard I tried, how much I wished, She would never see things the way they were. I would never get help from home. I would have to suffer this pain by myself.
And I knew then that I was truly alone.