Beautifully Disturbed | ✓

[66]

🚫 A/N: the upcoming content will speak of sensitive matter, please proceed with caution 🚫

- - -

Laila's POV

He looks away, he's too afraid to meet my gaze, afraid of my reaction and that breaks my heart into a million pieces because he thinks this will scare me away.

I take the book out of his hands and place it on the table.

I hold him in an embrace, his head resting on my chest as I caress his hair. "Hey... It's okay."

"I should have mentioned it before but... I couldn't do it."

"No, no. That is solely you're right. I'm glad you took your time to think it through and told me once you were able to get comfortable enough."

"But I—"

"Shhh. It's okay. It's alright. This doesn't bother me on bit. Those don't define you as a person, okay? They will never define you unless you give it the power."

As I caress his hair, I think about how his intermittent explosive disorder is probably a coping mechanisms for his borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic disorder.

His erratic behaviour is slowly becoming more understandable as I piece together information.

He does seem to get angry frequently when things start to get out of hand. When he's not able to cope with his issues, he loses it.

Intermittent explosive disorder or IED involves repeated, sudden episodes of impulsive, aggressive, violent behavior or angry verbal outbursts in which someone reacts grossly out of proportion to the situation.

The signs were pretty clear with Alex... he had road rage, he would be extremely aggressive with me when angry, he'd throw or break things, and show other forms of temper tantrums. These are all signs for IED.

IED's risk factors is closely related to history of abuse or other mental disorders such as borderline personality disorder, which he also has.

Borderline personality disorder or BPD is a tough disorder to deal with. That's not to say every disorder isn't tough, this one is just slightly tougher than all the other hard ones.

His fear of abandonment, his unstable and intense sexual relationships he had in the past, his impulsive and risky behaviour, his mood swings, and his inappropriately intense, angry outbursts are all signs of BPD.

On the other hand, post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD is a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it.

There are a few symptoms I can think of right off the back of my head that seem to match Alex. He does seem like he has nightmares and he gets anxious often, which he usually turns into anger.

PTSD's base is a traumatic event... so what happened to Alex?

• • •

Alex's POV

It scares me to revisit my childhood. Oh, how I wish it was normal and happy. I would do anything, any-fucking-thing to go back and prevent such a horrible thing. Forgetting is difficult and remember it is the worst. But I will face it today, I will tell Laila because if I don't, it will eat me alive sooner rather than later.

Enough is enough. I've done enough running. I'm going to tell Laila my deepest, most darkest secret. Something I didn't even tell James because I was afraid my whole world would collapse.