The War Within Me {ON HOLD}

Messed Up Morning

           

CHAPTER 1

Four. Five. Six...And now its pouring.

                Now what?

I sigh and turn away from the window. Counting raindrops is therapy for me. It calms me down. But now there's too many.

My forehead's getting wetter by the second. My fingers are having silent battles with each other as I play with them in my lap. My breathing gets quicker. I tense up. I shiver. My eyes tear up.

School.

I hate school.

So many people. So many voices. Too many voices. Too many judgmental faces.

Calm down, Nova. Don't let them see you.

No one's gonna see you.

What if they do?

They won't. You're invisible.

I shake my head. I need something. Anything. Anything to distract me from the voices in my head. What's something nice? Something fun?

Lydia. Lydia's fun. She's my best friend. She's beautiful and wonderful and so so amazing.

I smile thinking about the time four years ago when we went hiking together. She made me stop at every blue flower and take a picture with it. Blue calms me down. It's the colour of the sky. The sky, who gives us protection from everything bad in space. Blue's the colour of the ocean. The calm, marvelous ocean, with schools of peaceful fish and bunches of vibrant flowers and coral.

I breathe in, thinking of all the peaceful, blue things in our world. The sky. The ocean. Waterfalls. Flowers. Birds.

The bus lurches to a stop, grasping me out of my thoughts.

Marybelle and Garrett get on. Garrett? Isn't he supposed to be at my stop? He didn't get on, I just assumed he'd be absent today. Why was he...oh. Yeah. Belle's his cousin. Almost forgot.

Belle quickly finds a spot beside a blonde girl I haven't learned the name of yet. Garrett continues down the bus...closer and closer to my seat. Number thirteen, my self-assigned spot. Unfortunately, Lydia doesn't ride the bus, so I've always sat alone. And I'm not planning on changing that.

I quickly grab my backpack off the ground and place it next to me so he can't sit there.  There's still space on the seat though. I'm sweating more, even though it's freezing cold on this late September day.

He's getting closer...closer...almost...here...

He walks right past my seat. Thank goodness. I'm safe.

A tear runs down my face.

No. Please. Not now. Why?

Mum!

Dad, don't go!

Get off me!

Shh, it's okay.

More tears run down my face as I get the flashbacks of the past years. I'm seventeen, and it's the beginning of twelfth grade. The past three years have been traumatic. From the trauma, I struggle with spontaneous panic attacks. Sometimes I can control them, sometimes it's too much and I have to go somewhere to just scream it out.

What happened?

Calm down, Nova.

She's in the hospital.