Tw: Anxiety attack

It's not a good day. 

I can feel it from the moment I wake up; that weird sinking feeling in my stomach, a shaky sense of something isn't right that I can't place because, objectively, everything is fine. I'm in my room and there's sunlight streaming in and I can hear my family talking downstairs and it's a Friday like every other. There's no need for my body to feel like this, but it does.

It gets worse when I walk into the hallway and find abuela putting up another cross next to my door.

It gets worse when Aaron texts that he can't hang out today because he's visiting his aunt all day.

It gets worse when I get an email from my college board with all the books I need to buy for this semester.

And then, when it's starting to get dark outside, it becomes the fucking worst. As the house gets quiet and the light fades, it's just me and my thoughts. They're rolling around my head like a handful of marbles, always in motion without a direction, sometimes crashing together with a dissonant clink that feels like it's rattling my entire skull.

The worst thing is that I've tried everything I know to make it stop. I went running for an hour. I did the breathing exercise my therapist taught me. I took my meds. I listened to the calm playlist Aaron made for me. I did everything, but now it's eleven pm and I'm lying on my bed, nauseous and breathing shakily into the silence of my room, and I still feel like the weight of the entire world is pressing down on my chest.

I want to climb out of my body, or at least get rid of my stupid fucking brain. Instead, all I can do is get up from my bed and pace around the room, biting at my nails even though I can hear my mom telling me not to in the back of my head. It's only on my third pass around the room that my eyes land on the sheet of paper on my desk.

It's the thought log Melissa gave me in our last session. On the paper is a table with two columns. The one on the left says Negative though/Fear, the one on the right Evidence against the thought/fear.

I blink down at them, trying to take a deep breath and get enough oxygen into my crumpled lungs to think. Then, I rummage through the chaos on my desk until I find a pencil and start writing.

I'm scared of going to college. Everyone else is looking forward to it, but I'm not. I hate the town as much as they do, but I don't want to be away from my family and Aaron. I'm scared that I won't make any friends there. I never had to make any after I met Aaron- what if I just lost the ability to do that? What if everyone thinks I'm weird? What if they're all like the White Teeth Teens? 

And what if I figure out that journalism isn't the right thing for me and I drop out? Mom would be so disappointed. Dad would kill me.

I don't want to be worse than Elena at everything.

In a few weeks, I'll be so far away from home. I'll have to go to the pharmacy by myself, find a new doctor, find a way to pick up my fucking meds without hyperventilating. I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can do it.

I'm not ready to leave. I'm not ready to grow up. I feel like I wasted my teen years. This is supposed to be the best time of my life, but it feels like I spent all of it at the doctor's office and stressing about schoolwork and feeling lonely in my bedroom while everyone else is making memories that they'll tell their kids about. I want to feel infinite like in the movies, but I just feel like I've been reliving the same day for years and then suddenly high school was over and now I'm here and don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do with myself.

I'm in love with Aaron and I shouldn't be. I'm fucking terrified that he'll find out. If he does, it'll ruin everything. And my family can't know either; I don't think abuela's heart could take it. No one can ever know.

The really pathetic thing is that I don't think I'll ever be able to love someone else than him. When I think about the future, I always see myself alone. I don't want to be alone. I want to be loved so bad it hurts and I know that I'm only eighteen and I shouldn't be so desperate, but I am. Sometimes I feel so lonely I could cry, but I know that if I start, I'll never stop. I'd flood the whole fucking town.

Tomorrow is Chloe's party. I don't want to go, but I agreed, and now I can't leave Aaron hanging. Everyone will stare at me. Everyone is always staring at me. I feel like they all know.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I feel fucking sick. I don't know why Aaron is friends with me. I'm not a good person. I don't deserve him or my family. I hate that I keep pushing them away, but sometimes I just get so angry.

I'm scared that I'll be on antidepressants forever. It doesn't feel like they're helping. It doesn't feel like anything can help me. Sometimes I think I'm okay, but then something happens and everything is terrible again. Why is everyone else so happy and I'm not?

I'm so fucking sick of being scared all the time.

I pause when the letters start to swim before my eyes. There they are, some of the fleeting shadows haunting my brain and some permanent residents, all dragged to the forefront of my mind and scrawled down on a paper. Melissa said that writing everything down would make me feel better, but it doesn't. It feels like I'm choking on the words, and when I feel tears dripping down my chin and onto the paper, I shakily drop the pencil onto the desk.

The empty right column is glaring at me, but I can't think.

It happens in a heartbeat. One moment I'm staring down at the sheet, the next I'm ripping it in half, then quarters, then eighths, and watch the shreds float back onto my desk.

It's still so fucking hard to breathe. Reaching for my phone is instinctive; pressing Aaron's contact a natural reflex. A heartbeat later, the sound of my ragged panting is momentarily drowned out by the monotone dialing tone. With each of them, my throat gets a little bit tighter and I'm about to hang up when there's suddenly a quiet crackle and then a raspy, "Feli?"

"H-hey," I shakily say. "I'm sorry, did... did I wake you up?"

"No, you're good," he lies. In the background, I can hear his bed creaking as he sits up. "Uhm... is everything okay?"

The question alone makes more tears pool in my eyes. "Not really?" I say, my voice cracking halfway through. "I just... Is it okay if I come over?"

"Yeah," he murmurs. "Yeah, of course. Want me to come pick you up?"

I swallow hard against the lump in my throat. "No, I... I'll ride my bike. I'll be there in a few."

"Okay. I'll wait for you outside."

I nod even though he can't see it and hang up. With my hands still trembling, I shove my phone into the pocket of my sweatpants and pull a sweater over my head before I turn off the light and leave my room.

The house is eerily quiet, the only sound the faint creaking of the floorboards beneath my feet as I make my way downstairs and then the jangling of the keys as I unlock the front door and step outside.

I grab my bike without so much as another glance at the house, pushing the sleeves of my sweater up to my elbows.

A moment later, I'm flying through the midnight streets with nothing but the road ahead of me. I can feel the tear tracks on my cheeks drying in the warm night air as I crane my head back and stare up at the sea of stars glittering above the roofs of the town, the sky a shimmery expanse of dark velvet.

This late, with no one but the moon watching me, it feels like I'm the only alive person in the entire world.

That is, until I arrive at the garden gate and come face to face with the most alive person I know.

"Hey," Aaron says, getting up from where he's been sitting on the front steps of the porch, his smile brighter than all the stars in the sky combined. "Fancy seeing you here."

A breathless laugh tumbles from my lips, surprising me more than him. "Yeah, uh... I was just driving by. What a coincidence."

Grinning, he pushes open the door and gestures for me to follow him inside. I drop my bike onto the lawn before I hurry after him, shutting the door behind me. My shoulders loosen a little as soon as I breathe in the familiar smell of the house; the specific washing powder that clings to all of Aaron's clothes mixed with the scent of wood and the spices his dad probably used to cook dinner earlier.

After the light of the streetlamps, my eyes need a second to adjust to the darkness of the hallway, but Aaron is already pulling me along by my sleeve. I follow him blindly up the stairs, past the bathroom where his dad taught me to shave and the pencil marks on the wall where we measured our height, until we reach the door at the end of the hall.

I love Aaron's room. I think when entering mine, you wouldn't really be able to tell much about who I am as a person, aside from my steadily declining mental health, maybe. Aaron's room, on the other hand, is saturated with him; from the walls that are plastered with posters of his favorite bands, to the track trophies lined up on his shelf and the tickets of movies he's watched in the cinema that he's tacked to the wall above his desk. In a way, it's like stepping into his brain and fuck, if that isn't my favorite place to stay.

"Dude, don't just stand here," Aaron says, flopping down on the bed. "Come here."

I obligingly step out of my shoes and walk over to him, sinking onto the mattress next to him so that we're both lying flat on our backs, our feet dangling off the edge. All the while, I'm careful not to brush against him, acutely aware that he's only wearing boxers and a large sweater, his binder flung over the chair by his desk. He doesn't like being touched or looked at for too long when he's not wearing it. I'm the only person besides his parents that he feels somewhat comfortable around without it, which is a fact that makes me feel a little bit dizzy sometimes.

We're both silent while Aaron scrolls through the two hundred playlists on his phone. Finally, Lover's Spit begins to play and he drops the phone onto the mattress between us.

"So," he says, "Let's talk. What's going on?"

"I don't know," I murmur. "It was just a shit day."

"Hey." He gently taps a finger against my temple. "Let me in. What's wrong?"

Item number two hundred and forty: the voice he uses when I get like this, soft and syrupy sweet. I don't think he uses it around anyone else.

I'm silent for a moment, staring at the ceiling while I flash back to the shreds of the thought log on my desk. Finally, I whisper, "It's just all too much at the moment. The whole college thing scares the shit out of me."

"Yeah, me too," he murmurs. I turn my head slightly to look at him; his eyes are fixed on the ceiling, glowing like embers in the soft light of the lamp. "I wish we wouldn't be so far away from each other."

I nod, swallowing hard. Behind him, I can see the photos he taped to the wall next to his bed, a dozen variations of our two faces looking back at me.

Us sitting on his porch with scraped knees and a football between us, proudly showing off our tooth gaps as we beam into the camera.

Us on the bus on our first field trip, me with a nervous look on my face and Aaron with a grin, an arm slung around my shoulders.

Us at a sleepover at my house, huddled together beneath a blanket with a bowl of popcorn still between us, my head on Aaron's shoulder, both fast asleep despite the blue light of the TV illuminating our faces.

Us making faces into the camera with our new braces, a selfie taken by Aaron on the iPad he got for his birthday.

Us at our first school dance in our matching suits, pretending to pose like a couple in front of the tacky foil balloons. I remember how happy he was that night, walking around proudly in the suit his parents bought for him, wearing way too much of the cologne we stole from my dad.

Next to that photo hangs a drawing I made for him in the after school center when we were around fourteen. It's Aaron with a cape and a mask with the words Jacob Jacobs: The Man-Man scrawled beneath it in clumsy handwriting. He's a hero whose superpower is that he's the manliest man ever.

The name Jacob Jacobs was an inside joke. His mom told him to think about what name he would like to be called and after hours of brainstorming, we, at the peak of our teenage stupidity, thought it would be hilarious if his first name was the same as his last name. Luckily for him, she didn't agree, but there were a few weeks during which I called him only that.

Looking at the pictures and then back at Aaron, now with a noticeable jawline and some acne, but the same dark brown eyes and dimples in his cheeks, I feel my chest filling up with so much affection that, for the second time that night, I feel like crying.

I only get ripped out of my thoughts when his hand suddenly grasps mine and lifts it up, turning it over to study it. "Were you biting your nails again?"

"Yeah," I murmur, trying to ignore the flutter in my chest as I stare down at our intertwined hands and the matching friendship bracelets around our wrists. They're flimsy little bands that we braided out of blue and green wool when we were fourteen; Elena helped us make them. I'm surprised they haven't disintegrated yet.

"Maybe you could try this one nail polish," Aaron says. "My mom told me about it, it's this bitter stuff you put on your nails so it tastes gross when you bite them."

"Maybe," I murmur.

Aaron lets go of my hand and turns his head to look at me. I feel like I'm made of glass under his steady gaze, like he can see right through my skin and into my brain, watch my heart as it stutters against my ribcage. "There's more, isn't it? It's not just the nerves before college."

I want to say: Of course there's more. Sometimes when I look at you I want to kiss you so bad it hurts and I only feel like a real person when I'm with you and Can you pretend you love me too, just for a moment, just to see what it's like to feel whole?

Instead, I say, "I'm also kind of scared because of the party tomorrow."

Aaron nods. "Is there anything in particular that you're worried about or is it just a general feeling?"

"Just... everything about it."

"Okay. Listen, we'll do it like always: I'll pick you up at home and we'll go there together. We stay together for the entire party. If you want to leave early, we leave. Sound good?"

Item number two hundred and forty-one: when Aaron talks about things, they always seem way less scary. He's Atlas holding up the sky when I feel like it's falling.

"Okay," I murmur. "I've just never really hung out with the White Teeth Teens, so I'm scared it'll be weird."

"I promise they're not as bad as they seem," Aaron says. "I mean, Bryce is an idiot, but Chloe for example is super chill. We had Calculus together last year."

Involuntarily, even though I'm the one lying in his bed when she's never even stepped foot into his room, my jaw clenches at hearing her name out of his mouth. "She likes you."

"No, she doesn't," Aaron immediately says. "I mean... at least I don't think so?"

"Aaron. She literally looks at you like she's in love every time you two are talking."

He lets out an unconcerned laugh. "Love is a strong word. Hey, that reminds me, did you take the quiz I sent you? The one about alternative love languages?"

"Yeah."

"And?" he asks. "What did you get?"

"Sharing food. You?"

"Making playlists."

"Huh."

"Huh? That all?" he asks, propping himself up on one elbow to give me an incredulous look. "Come on, you have to admit that that's accurate."

I shake my head with a snort. "I honestly don't get why you love these tests so much."

"I don't know. I guess they help me learn more about myself," he earnestly says. "And about you, too."

"You already know everything about me," I point out. Everything except this one thing.

Aaron rolls his eyes and dramatically lets himself fall back onto the mattress. "You suck. I don't know why I keep you around."

"Because you love me," I say, forcing myself to keep my tone light.

Aaron looks at me from the corner of his eyes, pretending like he has to think about it. "Mh. I guess you're alright."

"Just alright?" I ask. "Mister Jacob Jacobs, what happened to me being your favorite sidekick?"

He laughs for real this time, eyes closed and cheeks dimpling. "God, could you imagine if I took that name? The college board would have had a field day with my application. There's this guy from Arizona, he's kind of good at track... Oh really, what's his name? Jacobs. And first name? Uh... Jacob?"

Whenever he laughs, I can't help but laugh with him. It's a deep sound that comes all the way from my belly and echoes from the walls of his room and for just a second it's like we're fourteen again, shushing each other and trying not to wake up his parents as we gasp for breath, Aaron's face bright with glee. I wish I could stay in this moment forever or go back to that time, to the minds we had then, to the feeling that nothing in the world mattered but what came on Disney Channel that night and Maths homework and the two of us. Always the two of us.

We laugh and we laugh and we laugh, until my ribs are hurting and Aaron has tears in his eyes.

"Fuck," he pants, blinking them away while he tries to catch his breath. It's only now that I realize that the playlist has started over and Lover's Spit is playing again. "I think we need to go to sleep. There's no way that was actually that funny."

I nod, still wheezing, and get up to pull out the second mattress that he has under his bed for whenever I sleep over. However, before I can get that far, his fingers suddenly clasp my wrist.

"Don't bother," he says. "You can just sleep up here."

I blink at him for a few seconds. "Are you sure?"

He nods, giving my wrist another tug. "Yeah, it's chill. There's more than enough space. Just don't hog the blanket."

I let out a disbelieving chuckle. It's probably not the best idea, but with Aaron looking at me expectantly, still smiling, I have no choice but to do as he says. He shifts to the side of the bed that touches the wall and lifts the blanket up for me to slip underneath.

When I lie down next to him and he reaches over me to turn off the light it's exactly like it was when we were little. The scent of his bedsheets is so familiar, as is the soft sound of his breathing next to me. Above us, the glow-in-the-dark stars that I used to envy him for are still on his ceiling, twinkling faintly in the dark.

"Night, Feli," Aaron murmurs through a yawn and shifts a little, his warm breath fanning against my cheek.

"Good night," I whisper back.

With my eyes still open, I begin to count the stars on his ceiling. I expect it to be difficult to fall asleep with him so close to me, but it's not; I'm so worn out from all the worrying and the crying and the laughing that I drift off before I even get to ten.

Nothing's really okay, but with Aaron it's easy to pretend.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi everyone!!

I gotta be honest... I really like how this chapter turned out I think? It's kind of really raw because it contains a lot of the stuff that's been going through my head lately, so I hope it's relatable for some of you as well <3

Not but seriously, this song will forever be iconic and I hope I did it justice ahhh. It was the cultural reset tbh

Thank you all so much for reading and have an amazing weekend!!

xoxo