Walk the Line

7 - The Time She's Struggling and Things Get Weird

sorry for the long wait i know im the worst love y'all also psa this has not been proofed at all i literally typed the last word and pasted it to wattpad and the chapter as whole was written in sleep deprivated states of 5 minute blocks so like sorry if it's a real mess. 

7 – The Time She's Struggling and Things Get Weird

College is this weird place full of early adults learning what it means to live on your own for the first time. As you can imagine, this contained area of "adults" can easily and very quickly become quite the shit show. College is this weird sort of bubble where everything you need to survive can be found in a 5 mile radius, and everyone you see is between the ages of 18 and 25, aside from professors and you kind of forget that people younger than 18 exist and have no idea what is going on outside of the realm of the five mile radius.

In this bubble, I was sort of miserable. And by sort of, I mean absolutely. It's a lonely sort of experience, moving to a college a few hours away where you don't know anyone else and they don't really know you. It's a lonely in which you're surrounded by people all the time, and even when you're alone, you're not alone, but someone you can still feel this desperate and disparately lonely.

Coming from a large family didn't help matters much. I was used to a noisy warm home full of people that knew everything about me and I knew everything about them. Instead, I got fluorescent lights and communal bathrooms and having to explain everything I am to people and it was exhausting.

Of course, classes themselves were also extremely difficult and for the first time in my life, I had a C. Five of them at once, to be exact. And I was trying so hard to bring them up and not be the family disappointment. So I slapped a smile on my face and told my family about the good times and not the bad.

"Hey Eleanor, I'm going out tonight so don't wait up. I'm also going to stay at Amelia's so you don't have to deal with drunk me," my roommate, Christine smiled.

"Okay, have fun! I'll be here, writing my seven page research paper," I laughed in a sort of self-deprecating way.

"Don't stress too much," she laughed and left the room. I began typing away on my laptop and hoping that the end of this paper would come sooner rather than later. I had a lot of things to do; this paper, read the entirety of the script for Angels in America, write a paper on that, begin my film studies homework, and watch the documentary assigned on the history of news casting. Panic was biting at my throat and I desperately tried to swallow it down.

My phone rang, and I looked down to see Ford was calling me. That was weird. He didn't call me. He'd texted me, and we'd had pleasant conversation, but we didn't call each other. I couldn't help but feel the panic rising in my throat and my heart start to pound. I picked up the phone with a shaky hand and tried to suppress the inevitable panic attack I felt pressing against my chest.

"Hey Ellie," Ford's deep voice answered the phone.

"H-Hey, C-can I call you b-back?" I tried to speak as calmly as I could.

"Eleanor? Are you okay?" he sounded worried.

"I-I'll be fine," I said quickly.

"Did you forget to take your medicine?" he asked, and I hated that he knew that I was having a panic attack since I was trying so hard to conceal it.

"Just breathe, Ellie. You can get through this. Listen to my voice, you're strong, you've made it through these before. Just breathe," he said calmly and I tried to match my breaths with the faint breaths I could hear from him on the phone.