This is much delayed and (hopefully) much anticapted, but it's a one shot about how they met. It's not my best, but I wrote most of it about 5 months ago and just now picked it back up within the last hour to finish. Apologies for the shortness, but I plan on adding more one shots.
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Tie my shoes. Fuck, they don’t feel right. Retie. Retie again. Retie for the third time. How is someone who can’t even tie their own shoes without panicking supposed to go to a party? But this is what therapist number 8 is suggesting. He wants me to socialize with some of my university peers, but although he’s privy to my disorder, he isn’t the one who is living with it. He isn’t the one who has to go into the house filled with normal 20 year olds who didn’t need to retie their shoes 3 times or repeat their name 5 times when they introduce themselves because they didn’t enunciate the first syllable properly.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Dude, you don’t have to knock that many times at the party. Just come on in,” Michael from Analysis of English Classics from the Romantics through Modern Period lecture says as he pulls me from the brisk Autumn air into the hot, hazy house. I am immediately swarmed into a crowd of people crammed into a space not made for this many people. My jacket is being shifted around, the rings encasing my fingers are being twisted, my shoes have become untied. The false perfection I tried to encase myself in is lost within the throngs of people slowly moving to the music and influenced haze.
Panic rises, rises, rises up my throat like a hot air balloon that is trapped and making it hard to breathe. I feel lightheaded and my skin starts to become covered in a layer of my own sweat from nerves. People are everywhere, perfection is no where, everything is out of place, and I can’t fucking breathe.
I could feel the people in the room looking at me and all I could think about was how many cups were on the floor spilling over with drinks. Then the floodgates opened when someone said, “dude, what the hell is wrong with you?”
Everyone saw me. Everyone saw a 20 year old kid having a panic attack. No one say the disarray of flaws around them, but everyone saw me. There wasn’t a grand movie scene of laughter and pointing, but I felt the whole room shift back to what they were doing and could hear their minds thinking how fucked up that one kid in the corner must be. They disregarded me and I could feel how far out of place I was here. I slowly pushed my way outside to begin my walk home when I felt a small tug on my arm.
“You ok?” A girl with a crooked smile and kind eyes asked me. For a split second, I didn’t hear the chorus in my head repeating things, pointing out flaws, or demanding that the world be fixed. I just saw her and heard her voice and felt like a livewire. I felt my face break in that moment and knew the truth was spilling out of my face in the silent night.
“Don’t let them tell you that you can or can’t be a certain way because fuck that and fuck them. They are insecure and are projecting that onto you. You’re who you are, none of that is changing. You have to live within the palace of your mind and the temple of your body every day. It’s you who has to look at your naked self in the mirror. It’s you who has to see the world the way you do. You have to come to terms with that and if no one else can, then so be it. But they aren’t you and they never will be so don’t let them bring you down. You are your own sun who shines in a certain way and it’s not your fault they can’t feel your heat from where they’re standing. Hold yourself up, look at life for the blessing it is, and surround yourself with joy and excitement and passion and love and vibrance and not negativity, even from yourself.”
She walked with me around the city in the middle of the night as we talked about the moon, the stars, classes, families, hometowns, food, and everything but what the hell was wrong with me. I knew there was something heavy between us when her wispy little hand touched mine and I didn’t recoil or think about germs. I craved her touch like an addiction that couldn’t be broken after that moment. I felt a warmth spread through me and knew all at once that for the first time it was content and happiness in my blood. She didn’t put me under a microscope to study or dissect or understand, she just let me live along side her and be alongside her and talk alongside her with no care that I didn’t step on the cracks in the sidewalk or repeated words or stuttered or would stop to count the number of streetlights that were out and then obsessively think about the fact not every streetlight was illuminating our venture. She let me be and was willing to be herself with me and even if this was just for the night, I had this pressing notion that I would hold onto our fleeting moments until I could find her perfection again.
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I'm working on more one shots now, but please tell me what you would want to her about. Or you have another story for me...
Please feel free to come talk about this story or life or the characters or things with me.
Thank you.
