Just Breathe

Chapter Twenty One

Two weeks later, Lia felt like she was getting more into a routine. The return to school was a bit harder than she had expected. Miko, one of Lia's only acquaintances, hardly questioned her story about missing nearly a week of school due to a stomach bug. Plus, because she was staying in all of her classes until the end of the semester, to not have any incompletes on her record, nothing outwardly changed about her academic life.

Although nothing had visibly changed, it wasn't as easy to switch her mindset once she was back in the halls and saw the acceptance letters of her classmates continue to arrive. She knew realistically she would start hearing back from colleges, but wished she hadn't prolonged sending them because of her anxiety. There was nothing that she could do now, except force a smile whenever a classmate would announce their latest college acceptance in homeroom. She had nearly thrown up when Miko had told her she had been waitlisted by MIT but accepted into Yale. If they were already sending out waitlists and rejections, no less to someone accepted to an Ivy, what did that mean for Lia?

That was the central thing on her mind as she sat in her group therapy session. She was now a few sessions in and was beginning to become familiar with each person.

"To Aviva's point," Becca interjected as she pushed her long auburn braids over her shoulder, "Even once we acknowledge to ourselves the things that we're going through, it's a whole other ballgame to talk about it with the people in our lives."

"Well yeah," Aviva, a girl with a mousy demeanor but stood at least 5'10, stated, "I know what I'm feeling. It's in my head, but everyone just expects me to be able to speak it out loud and feel comfortable doing that."

"Why do you think it's difficult to let others know how we're feeling? Even the people you may trust?"

"You don't know how someone is going to react," Kadon, a boy with a thick Bronx accent, said.

"Good point," Becca replied, "Anyone else?"

"Because people can be really damn nosy," Justin's comment garnered a laugh from the group. It was something Lia had noticed quickly about the boy who had stayed on her mind since their first encounter. They had spoken at least once every session. He didn't take many things too seriously, and Lia still had a hard time figuring him out.

Even Becca, the 'adult' in the room, couldn't help but laugh, "Fair enough. But beyond that," she tried to reel the conversation back, "Is the fear of judgment or embarrassment the reason why you might not want to talk?"

Lia's eyes glanced around the room, as the other teens shifted in their chairs, nobody speaking. She raised her hand slightly, mostly from instinct of having to do so in the classroom, and spoke, "I don't think that's the issue,"

Becca offered a small smile when the teen who spoke sparingly at the sessions answered, "Can you elaborate a bit more?"

Lia cleared her throat, "I mean, I've been judged by countless people who don't know me. I've heard that I'm a bitch or a prude or a snob... at school" she added in the last part, although she knew that wasn't really the case. Lia hadn't only experienced this within the walls of her school but whenever she opened her social media accounts. Even with having everything set to private, she still would come across trolls who had nothing better to do than say flat out lies about Lia and her family. "But judgment is their issue. Regardless if it's true or false, if someone wants to judge me, they're going to do it,"

A few of the teens in the group nodded in agreement at her words, "That's very true," Becca said, "But what about fear of being judged for the things that are true? Disclosing to someone that you trust that you messed up or you're upset about something. Could the fear of that stop you?"