Panic Attacks // Ruel // English

Chapter 90

I hear his screaming voice penetrating through the wall. A door slams shut and the sound becomes more muffled. But still I can hear half his words. His anger flows through his body. Let him go up in fire. I walk further away from the noise and close another door. I seem to hear it everywhere. But it's instinctual, the instinct that needs to hear what it's about to prepare myself for a possible next step in my direction. It is my inner child that has taught herself this behavior. But I don't want to hear it here. I never want to hear it again. I've had enough fights. Even if it's not against me, it just feels like an attack.

His voice scrapes through the air. Like a nail scratching a chalkboard.

Ruel: "Nate she will screw up my entire career!" Ruel yells over the phone. At least I think so.

I sit on the guest bed and pull my legs to my chest. Put my hands over my ears and try to block out every sound. Mute it as best I can.

Ruel: "If you don't want to help me, I'll do it myself!"

I close my eyes but I feel his words echo through my body. So shake my organs. Wake them up and keep it focused. Prepare for what will happen next. What kind of blows am I going to take next?

The hands over my ears don't help. They are not ear muffs that are used in construction. They are not earplugs that you can wear at concerts. They are shells that absorb and amplify the sound.

It feels like my head is about to float. No longer landed on Earth. Not grounded with the ground beneath me. The vision in front of my eyes becomes blurred and a pressure builds in my head. A pressure that is getting heavier and heavier. The floor starts to spiral, the whole room starts to spin around me. A wave of heat goes through my body. Cools down again and flows back in. My eyes squeeze themselves shut. I just feel like I could fall over at any moment. His voice overpowers my own thoughts, I can't even imagine how I could ever breathe into my stomach.

I couldn't before. Locked up in my room, rocking on my bed. Waiting for my father to storm up and slap me for something I didn't do. The fear never went away. He has marked himself in my character, he has laid the foundation and I am not grateful to him for that. The nights I spent hiding in my room, trying to keep as quiet as possible, left a mark. I was scared, very scared. It didn't feel like my home. It was a battlefield where no one came to save me. I lay bleeding to death among the smoke bombs that flew around my ears so that no one could ever find me. No one could ever know that I was in pain. It was a pain hidden under a layer of lies. Their own lies because they lied to themselves. I was the one who felt everything. Who felt everything as it really was. It was never noticed. No one had ever asked how I felt, because I didn't matter. I was only there to get rid of anger. To take it out on someone. Someone to start a fight with. Someone to throw razor-sharp words at. Someone to take prisoner. Someone to have their own fun with. And that time is marked in my heart. In the dead part of my heart. The black piece that will crumble more and more. They never deserved that piece of it.

There is so much anger that has never been unpacked. All my revenge I've always kept behind. All the words I spared them. I want to scream them, I want to spit them. I want to show them how much trauma they have given me. How many burn marks they left behind. How many times they hurt me. I don't want to be quiet, I want to scream it. Scream the lungs out of my body until they turn black and the words enter their heads. Like knives brushing their hearts and pretending to be gentle and then attacking them. Attack until they feel the same pain they gave me. I am a strong woman but embraced in a thick layer of trauma. Trauma holding me back in life. It's all thanks to them. The layer of death had been enough. The layer of rape had been enough. That had been what should come back in my dreams. Not the aggressive behavior of my parents. It should never have been taken out on me. And now it feels exactly the same. I feel the same threat.

The bedroom door flies open and hits the wall with a loud bang. I curl up and protect my head with my arms and turn my face to the window if I don't dare to open my eyes. I don't need to see it. Only to feel it.

Kate: "Honey, I'm not going to hurt you. You're safe here." I hear her reassuring voice say.

I hear her coming my way but she doesn't touch me. She doesn't touch me. When I open my eyes and see her holding out her hand to me, I want to get up, but I almost seem to fall. The world shoots out from under my feet.

Kate walks with me to the front door. Her hands over my ears and mine over them. When she opens the front door and we stop, I see Ruel in the corner of my eye. He is standing in the living room and at the same moment meets my eyes. There is dead silence. I look at him with fear running through all my veins. It's like all the trust in him is flowing out of my body. He is completely frozen. He looks at me with pain in his eyes, but they seem to be on fire. His skin is bright red. His chest makes big movements up and down. And then I feel him break. It was the moment of realization. The eternal eye contact is hurting. Cutting into my heart. Let the blood drip on my organs.

Kate takes me along when she realizes we are looking at each other in silence. She breaks contact between us and puts her hands back on my ears as we step outside. Walk to the car and drive away. She forces me to leave him, to step away from him. And that might be a good thing. Completely isolated from myself and away from the world, feeling like all the senses are on, I'm in the car. After a long silence, Kate apologizes. But it's not her fault.

She knows what all this does to me. Maybe not exactly, but she knows these things trigger me. Bringing me back to the old days. Certainly not a good time. She knows I'm going really bad on this. That I am absorbed in the feeling of the past that then overpowers. Dragging me to the places I don't want to be. That I have flashbacks, like I have to run for my life. Over and over again. Because the memories follow me everywhere. One particular thing happens and they awaken from their sleep. Ready to attack. Ready to take me back again. Ready to shoot me down. Kate knows the reasons why I left. She knows where to pay attention. That's why she got me out of the house. Away from anything that could possibly go wrong in my mind. She was looking for me the moment she knew the screaming wouldn't stop for a while. It now feels like the family need to change their entire lifestyle. But my household was not healthy. That was not a healthy situation. So really not much needs to be adjusted. This is already better than I could have ever wished for. There just needs to be a safe place for when something breaks out in the family. If they happen to be yelling at each other that I shouldn't be among. Then there should just be a place for me to shut myself off. Because in moments like this it feels like I'm hanging in a deep hole somewhere. Hang between two sides of families. My parental home with my father and mother who are mainly in the foreground. And on the other side is the Van Dijk family. They feel like family. Just not in moments like this. Not in moments when I've isolated myself. Not in the moments where they talk about what happened in the past. For example, their life in London. I wasn't there, and I certainly didn't have to. But it really feels like I'm hanging in some kind of chasm. It's an insecure place between families that I just don't fit in. The only house where I really feel like I belong, where the four walls are the arms, the large glittering windows are the eyes and the open front door is the heart, that is with Ruel. And that place of warmth and safety has just collapsed before my eyes. I heard it happen. I heard the stones crumble. Turn into a heap of rubble.