Relations To Lashton (On Hold)

Chapter 2: I'm Sorry For Not Telling You Sooner

(unedited)

I sit there for a minute, trying to get my thoughts together just enough so that I can explain everything to the two boys who are staring at me expectantly.

Looking up at Luke and Ashton, I can already feel more tears begin to prick my eyes. This is going to be harder than I would have ever been able to imagine.

Both boys are looking at me, concern written all over their features. It's hard to know that by telling them, I'm going to be putting so much pressure on them. I don't know how they'll react, but I do know that it's going to hurt them to know.

This is why I've kept it a secret for so long.

I move out of their laps and sit in front of them, my body close enough to the edge of the bed that I could all off just by leaning back a little bit and my knees touching Ashton's right knee and Luke's left knee.

"Before I start" - they look at me expectantly - "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for not telling you sooner." A look of confusion crosses Luke's face and Ashton just looks worried.

"I guess I'll start with the anxiety. I've told you that I have it, but not how bad it is. I normally have six to eight panic attacks between eight at night and three in the morning. I have about four during the rest of the day.

"I'm obviously really good at hiding them, otherwise you would've already known about them."

The two boys are a lot calmer than I thought they would be. Luke still looks confused, but less so and Ashton looks even more concerned than before, though he's not making any moves to come closer.

"Then there's the insomnia. I'm lucky to get twenty to thirty minutes in every night, an hour at the absolute max. I rarely get more than a couple hours every week.

"That's why I'm still up. I spend most of my nights listening to music and thinking. I hate being stuck just thinking, but I can't stop. It would be such a relief to not have to think so long and hard about everything. It almost physically pains me."

I can't handle looking at the two boys anymore. Instead I stare down at my hands again.

"Alongside the insomnia, I also have sleep paralysis. Whenever I do get any sleep, nightmares that are caused by PTSD wake me up and leave me paralyzed in my bed while shadows and things that aren't really there terrorize me for hours.

"The sleep paralysis is one of the main reasons I don't 'wake up' until around ten in the morning. I also find it genuinely hard to get out of bed and face the world every morning."

Ashton grabs my chin and makes me look at him.

"Why didn't you tell us before?"

"I'm sorry, I just couldn't handle telling people about how fucked up my brain is. It makes me feel vulnerable and you know that I hate feeling vulnerable."

He sighs and pulls me back into their laps, my face now buried in Ashton's chest and his hands running gently through my hair while Luke strokes my back.

I don't want to tell them that there's more, but I can't tell them about just a few of the things that are going on since I already said I would tell them everything.

"There," I take a shuddering breath, "There's more."

Instead of waiting for either of them to speak again, I go straight into the next subject of how fucked up my brain is.

"The PTSD is also a pretty big problem. It tends to cause panic attacks, but most of the time they come just because they can.

"It comes from what happened with my twin brother and my father when I was thirteen."

I realize too late that they didn't know anything about me having a twin brother or a father who had ever been present in my life. I had kept that information hidden from everyone. Only my mom knew, and she passed away about a year before I met Luke and Ashton as well as their friends Michael and Calum.

All of them knew about my mother having passed a while back and that my father wasn't and still isn't present in my life, which is the entire reason that I live with Luke and Ashton. I'm incredibly lucky that they agreed to let me stay with them.

At first it was only because I needed somewhere to stay while I worked on getting back on my own feet, but it soon became that I didn't think I could handle living somewhere without them. Luke and Ashton were my two closest friend and Michael and Calum were also very close to me.

After the first couple months of living with Ashton and Luke, Calum and Michael coming over so often that it was like they lived there too, I had become so comfortable around them that I never wanted to leave. It wasn't a good thing, being so attached to the four of them to the point that I wouldn't be able to survive without them.

Another couple months passed and I accepted the fact that I couldn't live on my own and that I needed the constant support no matter how little it was. Though, with the boys it was never a small amount of support, it was as much support as they could possibly give me which happened to be a very large amount of it. I was very appreciative and still am.

"Arin, sweetie?" I snap out of my thoughts and face the fact that I still have to explain the rest of my mental issues. I just hope that I can handle bringing up the things I've tried so hard to never think of again back to the front of my mind.

Word count: 1001