It Doesn't Even Matter

Disorienting, self-destructive and mean

🛑 TRIGGER WARNING! Hi guys, I'm going to put an extra trigger warning before this chapter because it's definitely the most intense so far. This chapter will cover a pretty severe panic attack and disassociation due to trauma. If this is triggering for you then please take care of yourself and don't read it. ❤️
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I ignore him the best I can still Drew keeps following me. He's not giving up, but he stopped trying to convince me to get in his car a few minutes ago when he realized I wasn't even going to acknowledge he was there. I don't think I care where I end up anymore. I just need to keep walking. I need to shut all of these feelings and thoughts away. He'll go away eventually. Then maybe I'll get up the courage to call Mom. I don't want to see her. I don't want to listen to her fuss over me in her pitying tone. I want to hide somewhere and collapse into myself privately for a while. I can't think clearly like this. I'm half here and half not. My heart is still racing. My mind can't seem to stick to any thought longer than a minute outside of words, phrases, or moments. I can't recall things right. If this was, if these things were real then I was far more gone than I had thought I was half an hour ago. What's left when nothing actually is anything anymore? The picture I'm painting in my head is dark. It's disorienting. Self-destructive and mean. I'm picking myself apart at the seams, looking in all the cracks, and pulling things out. Everything that's happened is happening again. I'm stuck. I'm right there. I'm sitting in that moment. I think it and it becomes real. I see it so clearly, I feel it in all the edges of my brain, in my heart. The image isn't changing because it's a real thing.

I try to pull back on the reins tight. Fighting myself to come out of the minute I'm not really in. I'm numb. I'm staring out of a hole I've never looked through, but I recognize a loud car horn that's not in the same moment I'm in, and I see grass. I'm walking down the street. I'm walking down the street and today is a different day. A different moment entirely. I know that. I'm not walking down the street. I'm in a room, it's colder than it should be. It's winter and all of the windows have been left open. There's all of that yelling again. The awful screaming. The fighting. I suddenly feel dizzy and need to sit down. I'm not sure I know where I am. I hate this feeling. My feet feel numb and I'm off balance. I stumble over to the side of the road and lower myself to the ground in a way that makes my head rush. I can't see clearly, things are blurry. I don't know where I am. I hear footsteps rushing towards me. I need to breathe and stop crying so I can see things easier again. I know what happened, and I've been replaced for too long.

"Hey, you're having some sort of panic attack ok? I'm going to help you through this." I wasn't having a panic attack I just couldn't breathe or think about anything straight on, and my head was pounding full of hot air that was hurting my skull. "Ok, can you focus on my voice?" I wasn't having a panic attack. This would stop when I was completely empty, when I was gone again. "Max! Focus on my voice?"

I'm with Drew. I want to tell him to leave me be but I can't get anything out of the air because it's taken over all the space that's supposed to go between to fit words. It will end when I'm empty or I pass out. It would be over when my lungs gave out. I wasn't having a panic attack. This just happened, my body was just trying to kill me.

"Ok just stay with me and do your best to do what I tell you to. I need you to try to take a deep breath. In for four seconds, then hold it for seven seconds, then out for eight. Can you do that?" Was he joking or just stupid? No that wasn't, couldn't, it wasn't going to happen because this wasn't happening at all. This would end. This would end. Drew's watching it kill me from somewhere else and there's nothing he can do. I'm about to faint, I can feel it coming the dots are here now. It's happened before, it ended things. I wasn't afraid of it anymore, I wasn't afraid to die. "Max!" Drew tightly grabs my hands and pulls me sideways to look at him. Rapidly shaking me back and forth. I'm with Drew but I'm floating. "You have to do what I do! Follow me, we'll do it together!" No fuck no, I can't. That wasn't how this worked, the air was broken for me and it hurt too bad to fight. The air was toxic, poisoned, and killing me. "Max!"