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alexplainlaterrrr · 7 days ago

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ramblings of a very stressed author during a heatwave

Have you ever had the feeling that the air is so hot, you can’t breathe? You know that the air is perfectly fine, you can feel your lungs fill with air, but you can’t escape the feeling that you’re choking. Your heart starts to race as you panic, which of course leads you to need even more air, air you should be able to breathe but can’t, and suddenly you’re silently suffocating in your mom’s passenger seat, praying she won’t look over and notice your inability to breathe.

“I just feel like you never tell me what you’re thinking!”

I’m thinking that I want nothing more than to get out of this car. Open the door and jump out while we’re at a red light. Or maybe while the car is in motion. If I hit the ground and rolled I could probably-

“So what did you think of their theater program?”

It was… fine. Didn’t insanely blow me away, to be honest. But I think it could be a career path I might like. “Yeah, it was cool!” I say, with much more enthusiasm than I truly felt. I hardly feel anything these days though.

“Do you think you’d want to go to school there?”

Want is a strong word for it. I don’t want to go to school anywhere. I want to stay in my quiet little barista job at the locally run coffee shop for the rest of my life. Making lattes and serving pastries until I die.

“Yeah, I liked it.”

The rest of the car ride is silent.

———

“What the hell is this!?”

I honestly have no idea what he’s talking about. I look at the car seat next to me. Two crumbs are on the seat. There’s a few blades of dead grass and some mud stains on the mat on the floor.

“I give you this car and you just trash it?”

I didn’t mean to.

“Who did you have in here that spilled crumbs everywhere?”

I don’t remember. Nobody was eating in my car recently. I feel like if I mention that I’ll make him more angry. His temper is already bad, the heatwave is only making it worse.

”Or is this from you throwing shit on your seats again?”

And the heat makes the air hard to breathe.

”I wasn’t putting food on the seats-“

And I start to suffocate on the air.

”Then who spilled crumbs in your car?”

Trying my hardest to keep my breathing even and steady is astonishingly difficult.

”…I don’t remember”

Suffocating.

”You don’t remember?” He angrily brushes the crumbs off the seat and onto the floor before sitting down in the passenger seat. I put the car in reverse and start to back out of the driveway.

”When I got this car I told you we would share it.”

Yes, I remember the agreement. The one I fucked up slightly by failing out of my scholarships.

”When I gave it back to you it was clean, and I had been driving it for months! You’ve been driving it a few weeks!”

As per usual, his angry ranting starts to fade into the background. There’s country music playing on the stereo. I made a playlist of country songs I don’t particularly mind, but I would never choose to listen to it. But my dad likes it, so I play it when he’s in the car. I hate when he’s in my car. I feel so self conscious about my driving. Lately, I’ve been listening to a horror podcast. I wish I could turn it on now. Maybe I’ll turn it on after I drop him off. The AC is running as hard as it can, and that makes it a little harder to hear my podcast, so I guess the music is a good choice for now. The cold air makes it easier to breathe.

I’m not sure when he stopped talking, but he starts up again:

”God, it’s so hot out.” No way, I hadn’t noticed. He rolls down a window. I hate having the windows open. I crack mine open too.

”…Yeah” I say, noncommittally. How could he go from nearly screaming to casually talking about the weather in the 2 minutes it took to drive from our house to the stop sign?

The drive continues in silence again, only the country music playing from my phone, until:

”I have to drive this car to work tomorrow, what if I have to drive my boss somewhere?”

Oh. This again.

”Do you want me to have to put my boss in this filthy car?”

The car isn’t filthy. There were a few crumbs, sure. I wouldn’t describe it as filthy.

”…I don’t know.” I mumble.

More silence. More damn country music.

“They started construction on the roads here again.”

And suddenly he’s calm. I hum a response so he knows I heard him, but he doesn’t seem happy with my quietness.

”Are you mad at me now? Is that why you’re being quiet?”

I’m not mad at you. I’m afraid of you. There’s a big difference. I take a minute to gather my thoughts and make sure all the words come out right.

”I’m not mad. It’s just that you keep jumping back and forth between being mad and casual conversation and it’s… hard to keep up with.”

He’s silent. I’m scared I made him more mad. Then, quietly:

”You’re right. That wasn’t fair of me.”

He noticeably does not say sorry.

———

I stare at the contract in front of me. I feel the red-hot rage bubble up, and try my hardest to fight it down. I’m slow to anger, but once I get there, I can’t seem to get out.

I want to tear that paper up in her face. I want to scream. I want to hit something. I want to throw a childlike tantrum. I want to go hide away in my room so she can’t see me cry. How could she do this to me? What happened to “even after you grow up, you’ll always be able to stay with us”?

She’s talking but I can’t hear the words over the noise inside my head. I just nod in agreement and wait for it to be over.

Eventually it is. She says I don’t have to sign the contract yet, I can take my time and think about it. I take the contract and walk up to my room. The staircase feels twice as long as it should.

As soon as the door shuts, I break down sobbing. I set the contract on my desk and open my phone to text my friends about what just happened. I wasn’t expecting, however, to see a text from my girlfriend. Or, now, ex-girlfriend. To make matters worse, she broke up with me over Snapchat.

That’s when it all becomes too much. I climb into my bed. I stop trying to look what my mother would consider to be “normal.”

I’m rocking back and forth, violently. I hit my leg. The violent action releases some of the rage, and the pain feels… correct. I hit it again, and again, and again until it’s not enough anymore. I start scratching my other leg. Scratching and scratching and trying to draw blood. My nails have gotten long but they’re weak since they have no polish on them. I can’t break the skin, and soon the scratching isn’t enough either. I want to bite something. I don’t have anything that I can bite within reach though, so I lean down and bite my leg. Hard. Again, trying to draw blood. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that your brain will stop you from biting yourself hard enough to draw blood though. So I just cry, and bite, and scratch, and hit, until I’ve exhausted all my rage.

I lay down and close my eyes for a moment. It’s catharsis, or something close to it. After I’ve cooled down, I sit up and inspect my legs.

Where I was hitting is fine, but there are bright red, angry scratch lines across my thigh, and a red bite mark on my knee. I try to put a wet cloth on it to cool it down and make it less red, but it doesn’t seem to help. I just pray nobody will notice when I go downstairs for dinner.

Nobody does notice. It takes a few days for the scratches to fade, and the bite mark becomes a bruise before it leaves too.

———

I don’t know if the AC is broken, or if it just can’t reach the backseat, but I’m absolutely melting back here.

Are you hearing this?

Crazy

The text from my stepsister comes in from across the car. I open it and shoot back:

Oh yeah

I’m trying my best not to.

My headphones are in and the volume is almost all the way up. Stereotypical as I am, I’m blasting early 2000s emo music as my mother and stepdad argue in the front seat. Something about my stepbrother having his phone out at breakfast after being asked to put it away? Despite my loud music, I can still catch snippets of the argument between songs.

”…you’re overreacting! God, you’re so emotional…”

I can feel the air getting hotter.

”…are you trying to say that because I’m in therapy…”

The stuffy car is hard to breathe in.

”…I’m sorry I wasn’t backing you up, but he was still…”

And again I find myself suffocating on air.

”…it’s not about that! It’s about how you never…”

Breathing deeply and getting no air into my lungs.

”…ok, fine, whatever. You’re right, you’re right…”

Quiet suffocation, waiting for the world to go black or my breath to return.

”…Elliott would never have their phone out at breakfast…”

I cringe at the mention of my name. Please, for the love of god, leave me out of it.

I turn my music up louder.

———

My heart is racing. The picture of my debit card staring up at my from my phone, accompanied by a text from my mother:

Do you have a debit card?

I’m panicking. I take a screenshot and send it to my friend, then in a panic, tell them to not reply because I’m deleting the messages. I rake through my phone, looking for anything and everything that might make me look guilty. I reply to their text, a lie:

I wasn’t planning on using it seriously, just wanted to see what it was. i didn’t know they’d mail stuff automatically.

The group chat is silent for a while as I quickly gather my things to leave. Thank god I made plans with my friends that would start before my father gets home. He shoots back a reply as I go to my car, which had been sitting in the sun, and felt like an oven.

What does that mean? Why would you even apply for that?

I panic and start to drive off without responding, until I realize he’ll probably see me drive past him. I can’t breathe. Whether it’s the panic or the heat, I don’t know. I pull over and shoot a reply:

I saw an ad saying that you could use it to get paid early and I was curious. i didn’t realize they were gonna send a whole debit card.

I knew they were sending a debit card. I wanted my own bank account so I could take my money and leave without worry that they would transfer it out of my account. But that dream was shot now. At least I got my parents off my back about it. So why am I still unable to breathe?

———

I’m going to throw up.

The thought circles through my brain. Over and over. I’m at my friend’s house. I don’t want to throw up. I excuse myself to the bathroom and take some deep breaths.

I’m going to throw up.

It’s fine.

I’m going to throw up.

I’m not going to throw up.

I’m going to throw up.

Thinking about it will only make me more nauseous, so stop thinking about it.

I’m going to throw up.

I shouldn’t have eaten that greasy fast food. I’d been having stomach problems all day.

I’m going to throw up.

Shut up.

I’m going to throw up.

You’re going to be fine.

I’m going to throw up.

Just stop thinking about it.

I’m going to throw up.

Would my friends hold my hair back? Gently rub circles into my back the way my parents always did? Or would I be left to fend for myself?

I’m going to throw up.

I flush the empty toilet and walk back to the room my friends are in. They’re booting up MarioKart. If they notice me acting quiet, they don’t say anything.

I’m going to throw up.

At first I refuse the controller, but my friends ask if I’m sure, and I decide to take it. Why not. Maybe it’ll make me feel worse, maybe it’ll get my mind off things.

I’m going to throw up.

We go through the game menus and choose game modes, difficulty, characters, karts, and tracks. I don’t know when, but the nausea fades away, and I have a great time playing with them.

———

When I got broken up with, I didn’t tell my parents. They didn’t even know I’d had a partner. For the past year and a half, we’d kept our relationship secret.

So after that devastating message — broken up with over Discord message, really? — I reached out to my best friends.

One of which immediately came to hang out with me. We drove to the only ice cream place open this late at night and got ice cream together while I just… talked.

I shared every thought that came to mind. The good, and the bad. I mostly said the bad as if they were meant to be jokes, but I knew that they knew I was serious.

The next day, I went to a different friend’s house to swim in her pool. My friend trio was back together, and we generally had fun. Though my jokes of drowning myself in the pool were not taken as lightly as I would have wished.

#rambles #ramblings #i write my best when i’m at my worst #writeblr #vent? ish?#taking my trauma and forcing it onto an oc #loosely inspired by my real life #tw emetophobia #tw emotional abuse #tw self harm #tw autistic meltdown

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