Chapter 1: Breathe In. Breath Out.

Terror. Anxiety. Depression. Nothing can compare to the swelling of emotion at the beginning of an anxiety. It's a passionate, terrible, bittersweet feeling that can cripple the strongest of people.

Chapter 1

Breathe in.

            Breathe out.

“Dear god, please not in school. Please don’t do this to me.”

            The suffocating terror and tunnel vision that assaulted me in any sort of stressful situation began to sneak up on me again, and I knew that even deep breaths wouldn’t calm me this time. Two kids in my fourth-period class were fighting…again…and it seemed to be coming close to blows. I didn’t know what the argument was about, and I didn’t know what was going to happen, but the tension was stimulating another one of my attacks.

Many councilors had promised me that concentrating on inhaling and exhaling would regulate my anxiety, but every once in a while an especially violent attack, like the one that was sneaking up on me today, stole this one, feeble source of relief from me. It was hard to take deep breaths when one’s lungs were too constricted to take in any air.

            “I need to go to the bathroom, please.” My tiny voice was barely enough to get the teacher’s attention, but she nodded silently in my direction. She didn’t normally let people go to the bathroom, and she didn’t know about my…condition, but I rarely asked to leave the classroom, and she trusted me, so she was willing to make an exception.

            Breathe in.

            Breathe out.

            My teacher had barely written the pass and handed it over her desk before my feet propelled me out the double doors and into the sunny courtyard where the cold wind tried to clear my head in vain. Gusts blew dark, silky strands of hair into my eyes that I quickly brushed away. I must’ve been a sight to see with my crazed eyes that were glazed over with tears and my shallow, gasping breaths. My hands were clenching and unclenching at my sides; my body was hunched over. But I didn’t think about any of this.

My tunnel vision could only focus on the hallway where I knew the bathrooms mercifully waited, and I could think only of reaching the one place in this school where I could give in to this internal war without any disruptions. I would probably cry, lie out on the floor, listen to music, or even all three, but I could feel that I would be in there a long time no matter what I did. Frankly, it scared me that I was getting so good at predicting the intensity and lengths of these silent battles, but, then again, when a person has this affliction for as long as I, they begin to be able to sense things that others may not.

Crippling anxiety and depression had haunted my days for a while now and had secured my place as an outcast at my school, but there was nothing I could do about it. The doctors had given us some information on our different options, but my parents didn’t have the money for a psychologist and I didn’t have the patience or desire for medicine. To me, giving in and taking medicine was a sign of weakness, and my entire life had been spent proving to the world that I was exactly the opposite. Plus, if the medicine began suppressing my feelings, my music would be affected. This mental instability, though inconvenient at times, provided good inspiration for my songs. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice that.

            I opened bathroom doors and almost flew into the stuffy, dim interior. Before locking the doors behind me, however, I had to make sure that I was truly alone. My fingers were pale and sickly looking on the dark, plastic doors of the stalls, and they trembled so badly that I wasn’t sure if I would be able to check all of them before retreating into myself. I made it to the last stall, however, and locked the bathroom doors. With this final task completed, I sank to the floor feeling something akin to relief.

            Breathe in.

            Breath out.

            Terrifying images of what I could do to myself while locked in this bathroom assaulted me, but, once again, I pushed them away. Permanent solutions to a temporary problem. At least, that’s what my guidance councilor had called it right before she commanded me to come visit her if I started having these thoughts.

A small, half-insane giggle escaped my lips, and I clamped my hand over my mouth to stop it. How little she knew. How little everybody else knew for that matter. Everyday for the last year, I’d pushed those thoughts away. Thoughts that could destroy me, my family, and the entire school. I never acted on them, though, so I could manage to convince myself that I didn’t need help.

My back was pressed against the cold wall of the bathrooms, and my fingers gripped the edges of the uneven tile so hard that my fingers turned white, and I’m pretty sure that a nail snapped. Images flashed behind my eyes. Knives. Razor Blades. My mother’s pills. A touching suicide note that finally revealed to the world my tortured soul. I couldn’t, though. I had a fear of pain and such a low pain tolerance that anything with a possibility of pain was out of the question. Also, I loved myself too much. I could complain about my flaws, but at the end of the day, I always dreamed about and planned my world-changing music and humanitarian efforts. I always thought about what would happen if I were taken out of the picture, but in reality I believed too much in my potential to touch people’s lives, and that was yet another thing I wasn’t willing to sacrifice for the sake of teenage hormones.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

My attempts to clear my head were hindered by my mind’s masochistic tendencies. It insisted on reminding me of days when I was happy and days where this entire situation began. I wasn’t always the emotional basket-case that the doctors wanted to pass me off as, there was some normalcy in my life, it was just buried deeply beneath the turbulent ocean of feeling on which I was trying to stay afloat.  

 

*   *   *

 

That day in the councilor’s office so long ago seemed like another life time. My hair was still long and naturally blonde, and my shy but sunny mannerisms gained me a lot of friends. “Friends” might be the wrong word to use, though. I was that little kids whose awkwardness was endearing rather than off-putting and whose child-like innocence gave everybody a small laugh every time something was said that I didn’t understand. So, I was always around people who liked me, but I was never “friends” with anybody. That was probably the start of my problems, but back to the councilor’s office.

The councilor was required by school rules to “get to know each student and make them feel at home in this school”, so she had called me down to her office for an “introductory chat” in which we were supposed to become best friends or something equally stupid, and we happened to get onto the topic of my extracurricular activities. Because I wasn’t athletic or overly-intellectual, I didn’t do any school-sponsored activities. Instead, I preferred to stay at home buried in the ever-changing world of music and books. When I told her that I wrote songs and stories, she latched on to this promising direction of conversation.

“I find myself drawn to the arts, Aedalyn; I used to want to be a singer, but alas, the schools needed me more. I may be able to give you some good pointers. Would you let me look at some of your work?”

I don’t like other people looking at my stuff. They either criticize or patronize, and I didn’t write for other people to enjoy. I wrote and composed because it was a good place to put the emotions that other, more normal children reserved for sports, but I naively figured that there was no harm in letting a councilor of all people read it. And she was right. It might be good to have some constructive input, so I handed over my mp3 player and turned on my latest creation, “Murderous Intentions”.

            “That’s a very creative name,” she said, “Why so…dark?”

            After this question was asked, I realized that I had made a mistake in letting this woman that I barely even knew look at my prized creation. Looking back now, I think that councilors get paid to sniff out suicidal or depressed kids, but I didn’t know that at the time, so I answered her truthfully.

            “It’s just an idea I came up with. You see, when true artists write, compose, paint, or sculpt, they let loose on their blank page, and this song is just what happened to hit the page the last time I wrote.” In my naivety, this seemed to be completely satisfactory and acceptable answer, but the fact that my subconscious was spitting out emotional, “scary” music was a warning sign.

            My limited ability to pick up on body language led me to believe that her wane smile was comforting to me, but it really just hid her “worry” for me until she could make it to the principal’s office. If I had been looking at anything but her face, I would have noticed the tensed body position and the knuckles that had long since turned white from her grip on the edge of her chair. If I had taken one look back before the door swung shut behind me, I would have seen her dial the number of my teacher to inform her of my need for extra observation from now on or her conversation with the principal on how to deal with this situation.

            That’s always been my biggest downfall, though. I never know when to keep my eyes turned forward and when to take one final glance to past.

 

*   *   *

 

            I glanced down at my palms sometime later and noticed they were bleeding. I didn’t understand why until I noticed the perfect crescent shaped gashes.

            “Well that’s worrisome,” I said to no one in particular. I had lost track of time like this before, but I had never managed to hurt myself in the process. I had to figure out what had triggered that and how to prevent it from happening again. My parents were constantly sneaking glances at my wrists at home as if I didn’t know what they were checking for, and it wouldn’t take that much for them to notice the open wounds on my hands.

            I checked the glowing face of my phone; I’d been out of it for two hours, give or take a couple minutes. I don’t know if I passed out or just zoned out, but it was time for me to get back to the land of the living. I tried to remember back to the few minutes before I lost myself, but I couldn’t bring it into focus. My breathing had been more constricted than normal and I had started seeing black spots, so I probably passed out, but it wasn’t that important right now. The more pressing issue was how I was going explain my absence to the attendance office and my teachers.

            I unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out into the blinding sunlight to find that it was lunch time. The school’s normal hustle and bustle didn’t stop, or even pause, as I stepped back into its flow, which sent a sharp pain into my heart and almost spurred another attack.

            “What is wrong with me today?” I whispered to myself. It seemed like everything was prone to set me off. I would have to be more careful. As I walked by my normal lunch area, nobody noticed me. Well, almost nobody.

            I locked eyes with this new girl who had recently started sitting with us, and I almost stopped in the middle of the commons. She had been sitting in the commons earlier when I ran through to the bathrooms, but I hadn’t bothered to look too closely. Now that she had caught my attention, I was surprised. Her eyes were so intense and so unabashedly defiant that I couldn’t decide if she annoyed or intrigued me. I decided to be annoyed. I wasn’t in the mood for making new friends today, and she seemed too…intuitive. She seemed like the sort to pry, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t need that. I preferred to stay on my own, and I was determined to keep it that way. People annoy me, and having a friend seemed like too much work. They wanted sleep-overs and movie dates and manicures. Heaven forbid one of us should move away! Then there were emails, texts, and phone calls to endure; there was no benefit. So, I broke her gaze and shuffled away to the lunch line still pondering why she was so obviously staring at me.

            Regardless of my irritation, however, something told me that she had noticed my extended absence, and an invisible force drew my eyes back to her where she was still staring.

Reviews

[Samuel Jack]

I enjoyed reading, your writing does feel professional, but I think you were rushing to get the emotions across, maybe a by product of writing poetry, I would have liked a scene at the start where everything was fine, a bit of normalcy and maybe some pleasant imagery, them when they descent began I would be descending with you, Instead of walking into a class room where someone seems to be having a panic attack. Of course I have only read this chapter. Once I've bathed Jacob ill read the next

[Magnolia Liberato]

I see what you mean. I'm thinking about rewriting some things because I do tend to rush. Thank you SO much for reading, it's hard to get any actual criticism from people, and I can't wait to hear what you think about the rest! :)

[Samuel Jack]

You can send read requests, or just review loads of stuff lol your on my friend list now so send me requests, or send me a message asking to review a recent piece of work you've done. But remember that seed cuts both ways!! And I got a WHOLE lot of poems baby! MWAHAHAHA!

[Magnolia Liberato]

Hahahahahaha. I will MOST DEFINITELY take you up on that. :P

[PureHeaven]

W. O. W.
Very nice, a great effort of conveying her emotions. You certainly got into the dark of it very quickly, good and bad thing I guess. I definitely wasn't forcing myself to read it, but it still felt very fast. I'm probably just being critical but emotions are fickle things that most people do *Not* like talking about so flippantly. I'm studying psychology so I have a fair idea of what I'm on about. But I could be wrong. Some people come to acceptance quickly, some people have no idea what they think and just deny, deny, deny. But I guess this is why its a book and not real life ;) God knows I did the same in my novel.
In the sense of it all, it was absolutely brilliant. I look forward to reading the rest.