False God

Chapter five

Max pov

Mexico

2022

My heartbeat is the ambient sound that fills my room, the shortness of breath is the feeling that pulls me down more and more, the sweat running down my skin leaves shivers wherever it goes, the tightness in the chest brings the feeling of death, the noise in my mind reminds me of my childhood.

Everything is familiar.

Anxiety is an old friend that always comes back. Sometimes it may be dormant like a volcano, but when it awakens it is relentless, the lava is composed of fears and insecurities that drag and destroy everything that has been built around it, no matter what barriers have been built to try to hold it back.

Time is relative depending on referential and at that moment I think it is infinite, because when I try to seek some refuge in it, it stops, it's almost as if I deserve it to last, as if I should feel these things. I try to count to 60 in my head to stabilize my breathing, but the shortness of breath is so great that I feel my brain forgetting how to count, I try to get up, but my body does not obey me, it is as if it is no longer mine. I feel like I could drown in the tears that run down my face, they taste like home, it's almost nostalgic.

I don't know how much time has passed, but I know that the volcano has stopped expelling all its lava because I hear again the voice that reminded me of everything I tried to forget at the race weekend in Austin. I pick up my cell phone and pause the video, he didn't even respect Didi's death, of course not, it is more interesting to talk about last year again, how I am undeserving of anything, but it is not only last year that is on the agenda, this one too.

I thought winning this year would finally show that I deserve it and that I'm good. But I'll never be good enough, I'll never be worthy enough.

Maybe my dad's right, he raised me to be perfect, ruthless as a volcano, to not care about anyone. But I failed. I thought I would be a bad person if I was like him, but maybe I was just more armored from all the hate disguised as opinion, maybe I didn't care about anything as well as I try to demonstrate.

But I care. I care so much that I feel sick every time I think about it.

I like to think that the world doesn't know how the things they say hit you, because if I think otherwise, it is admitting that this world is crueler than I thought. I like to think that if they knew, if they saw me like this, alone in some hotel room in Mexico with eyes as red as the lava of an erupting volcano, as shaky as the earth during a seismic quake, they would leave me alone.

But it makes me even worse to think that even if they felt sorry for me and didn't speak anymore, they would still have the same thought, so in the end everything would still be the same. And sometimes when you hear the same thing said many times by many people, you believe it. Maybe I don't deserve it, maybe I'm not good and worthy enough.

- Hello? Max are you there? What do you want? - I hear my father's voice over the phone waking me from my trance, I almost forget that I called him.

- Hi Dad, I need you to come to the Mexico race, I know I said I didn't want to before, but we haven't talked about the Austin GP yet. I need your help, please, I need to get better. - My throat is so dry that I don't understand how I can speak.

- I'm glad you called me Max, hearing some hard words has always worked for you, so I guess I should thank that jerk from Sky Sports for talking shit on TV, at least it served to make you realize that you need me. I'll be there tomorrow night, try not to have a hissy fit until then.

He hangs up without giving me a chance to respond, that's okay, I couldn't say anything anyway, not when he's right. I need my dad to be better, I need him to ignore everything they are saying. I guess in the end Jenna was wrong, getting away from my father is not the solution, maybe his methods were not the most conventional, but they work, and I can just ignore the past and live only in the present. I'll go back to Monaco after this race, I would have an appointment with Jenna just as I promised Charles, but I'll cancel it, I've come this far thanks to my father, so I'll follow up with him again.