Pretty Boy [bxb] | ✔️

Chapter twenty-five: I don't want to feel like this

𝙄 𝙙𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨

Trigger warning: mention of self-harm.

It's like my mind has finally caught up with everything that has been happening to me recently and has begun to process it.

As soon as I wake up, I feel sick to my stomach. Reactions like this used to happen so much that I already know what it means; I'm not going to get a break from my anxiety today. I sit up slowly, switching on the fan next to my bed and suck in deep breaths to relax a little.

It's like the fleeting thoughts of fear I had this week came crashing down on me—hard. It feels like they were slowly suffocating me and I'm not sure if I can make it stop. I just need it to stop. My hands are already shaking, and just by waking up and feeling like this so suddenly, I feel the urge to cry. I don't. Instead, I groan and bury my head into my pillow.

Anxiety is so exhausting. I've been having a great week, and now I feel like this with no reason to. I've started dating someone, and that person loves me. But I think that's just it. Someone is in love with me, and that is terrifying.

I feel terrified.

I check my clock and see that I've overslept. I only have ten minutes until I have to leave the house. Cami should be here to wake me up by now, but I guess she doesn't want to go to school with me today. I decide to lay down and focus on my breathing, counting up to ten, then starting at one again.

I decide that when my mum realises I'm not at school and comes upstairs to wake me, I'll tell her that I'm not going in. It's come to a point in mine and my older sibling's lives where if we don't want to go into school, our parents won't force us.

That's what precisely happens. Ten minutes later, my mum is at my door telling me that I'm supposed to be on my way to school now. I tell her I feel too anxious to go in and without a second thought, she's on the phone to the school to authorise my absence.

Due to feeling as though I may throw up, I force myself to sit on my bathroom floor with my back against the wall next to the toilet, letting the coolness of the tiles reduce my boiling temperature, just in case I am sick.

I used to feel like this so much when I was fourteen years old, and I haven't felt like this since I was sixteen. The fact that it's happening again is scary. I don't know if this is a one time thing or it's going to start up again. I just want to get better.

I can feel my heart beating rapidly against my chest, and I think I'm about to cry, about to start asking why I have to feel this way, when I hear my phone vibrate and I go to it straight away. Checking it, I see that it's Alex. This seems to get something of a smile out of me.