heartbreak girl | s.m.

59 | january

chapter playlist ⏯
• imagine - josh gray
• i miss you, i'm sorry - gracie abrams
• what we had - sody

🚨long chapter alert🚨

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january
gemma <<<

This is what they call regressing.

"Just tell me what's wrong, Gemma."

I heard Jesse's pleading voice, but I couldn't speak. And if I could, I don't know what I'd say, because I don't know what's wrong.

Once he saw that I wasn't going to answer, he pulled me close, wrapping his arms around me tightly, and let me shake and cry in his arms.

I haven't had an anxiety attack since like, October or November. That was months ago, and now all of a sudden, I'm waking up at three a.m. and panicking?

My attacks originally stemmed from Shawn stuff; I hadn't experienced anxiety attacks since middle school before I started taking my antidepressant. And when I started taking that, the attacks started to come quite frequently. Once a week, at least. When we first broke up, there was a solid week where I had at least two a day. I never stress how bad it is to Dr. Kelley, because I don't want to mess that up, too. The antidepressant does its job, and I don't want to have to go through a whole new process of finding something else that works when I could just deal with an anxiety attack every once in a while.

Thankfully, once the break-up became less fresh, the attacks happened much less. Like I said, I haven't even had one since November, which shows that I'm improving.  But now, for some reason, it's happening again. I wish I knew why.

Is it a Shawn thing again? I thought I was getting over that. I know I was getting over that. I have Jesse.

You're not over anything. You were just looking at old pictures of you guys last week, thinking about how much you miss him. You're just pretending to be over it, and now your lies are catching up with you.

That's not true. I am over it. If I wasn't, then I would have been having attacks this whole time. I don't even think about him all that much anymore.

Liar. You think about him every day.

Briefly.

Maybe it's not related to Shawn at all. Maybe it's because of some other stressful aspect of my life. Like...school. Or work. I mean, I have been pretty busy doing stuff for Isaac ever since Christmas break ended. I wouldn't say I'm stressed over it. And I wouldn't say I'm stressed over school either.

Maybe it's a Jesse thing.

But I feel good about me and Jesse. He doesn't stress me out or give me anxiety. It wouldn't make sense that I'm just now having an anxiety attack when nothing has changed in my life in a while now.

Jesse held me for a while until it passed. He's done this with me a couple times, before we were even dating. It was worse back in those months where the break-up was on my mind constantly, and sometimes, he was around to see me freak out. He's always been so understanding and helpful, though, which I appreciate. I just hope he's not wondering all the things I'm wondering. He knows I used to have them because of the break-up, so I hope he's not thinking that I'm having one now because I'm still thinking of Shawn.

"What was that, Gem?" he asked. "I thought...I thought you weren't getting those anymore."

"I thought so. too," I said, feeling a couple more tears fall from my eyes. I feel like a total idiot. Stop stop stop. Don't cry.