Sincerely, Anonymous

February 26

February 26

Dear Annabeth,

I find that sometimes I just feel like screaming. I run out of words and this sort of panic rises up inside me and it takes all my energy just to keep my voice down and not start shouting as loud and as long as my body can handle. There's no telling when it will happen or what will start the feeling. It will start while I'm sitting in class or listening to a sad song or reading on the subway. There's no warning to it.

Whenever it happens it becomes nearly unbearable to hold the screams in. I can feel my body shaking and my hands sweating but all I can do is sit and clench my stomach to try and keep myself together. Keep myself in in. It feel like all these crack sare covering my body, threatening to rip me apart and suddenly everything is sore and searing with pain and I can either choke back the screaming until later or let it out. Each time I choke it back I can feel the pressure. Building up. Building up until I break. There is no escaping it, they will always come eventually, it’s just about whether or not I can make it to somewhere solitary before those cracks rip me to pieces and I have no more control over my body. I have to count every breath. In. Out. In. Out. Otherwise suddenly I'm hyperventilating.

It's different then a panic attack. My panic attacks have a purpose. They come on due to stress. Panic attacks keep my voice in. I can't breath and the room is closing in on me and the panic holds my chest tighter and tighter and I'm crying at some unknown pain that hides deep in my soul, not my body. When a panic attack happens I can feel something break. I feel the panic welling up in my chest and then there is an impossibly loud crack somewhere deep in me that only I can hear, and suddenly my body and all it's actions are no longer in my control.

No, the need to scream is far from a panic attack. It feels like an animal living inside me, growing bigger and bigger and my body is suddenly something hard and fragile. Something hard pressed and evil rears its ugly head inside of me. It takes over my mind, not my body.

I'm telling you this because it happened earlier. I was sitting in The Beanery with Izzy. She was doing homework and I was plugged into my tablet, my eyes closed and music on high. I was pretending to ride the music like a wave. This song came on that I vaguely recognized, Skinny Love by Birdy. I was trying to place where I knew it from when suddenly I felt that pressure. I took a breath, trying to suck it back but those invisible cracks spread like a spiderweb, faster than I could ever imagine. And suddenly I was overcome so violently and heavily that I dropped the latté I had been holding. Froth splashed across the pale furniture, brown liquid flowing across the tiled floor.

Izzy looked up from her work. We both stared at the caffeinated river, watching its foamy tendrils grasp the chair legs. There was a moment of silence, broken quickly once the screams began.

Some people say that when you're dying you have this sort of out-of-body experience. That's why I was sure I was dying. I couldn't feel a thing, yet could see what was happening as though through a filmy lens, from far away. It was like watching a scene play out above shore while floating underwater. I had a weird thought that maybe I was drowning. But how could I drown in a coffee shop? My brain was full of cotton, there was no more logic to calm me down, just a panic that was so different from that I am accustomed to.

I could hear my screams. They were guttural, animal sounds. Each one bone shatteringly loud. My body thrashed about, breaking a stool, shattering the coffee mugs that lay on the counter. Someone was holding me down. Saying my name over and over in different voices. Amy. My mother. Emily. My father. Kay. Izzy. Leah. Sam. Brianna. Emma. Their voices making a beautiful chorus. I watched as my head hit the tile. Hard. I heard the crack, though I felt a million miles away. Then blood. There was so much blood. An impossible amount. Then things were going black. Black and fuzzy and blood and voices and screams.

I woke up somewhere unfamiliar, my head throbbing like someone was hammering it with an ice pick. I was in a bed, though not my own. It was too soft, impossibly soft really. All silk and down. Too soft to be something I could afford. It was dark outside the wide window. How many hours had passed? Izzy sat cross legged on a rocking chair, a large book open on her lap.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," she said, walking up to the bed and sitting down on the corner.

I touched my head, right where all the pain emanated from. It was bandaged. Heavily.

"What happened?" I asked. My voice sounded dry. I wondered again how much time had passed. When the last time I had water was.

"You tell me. You're the one who had some kind of mental breakdown. As for what happened after you decided to crack your head open, I took you to my house," she paused, "my dad is a doctor, I had him bandage you up."

"Are they sending me to the Facilities?" I said. I could hear the fear in my voice. Why wouldn't I be sent away? That's what happens when you have a breakdown, they lock you up. Fear tightened my chest and I tried to swallow it down. It was definitely not the time for a panic attack.

Izzy just laughed. A tinkling laugh. Light and airy. 

"No," she stated flatly, "whoever must have been working the shop was out back, nobody was there but me. I got you back here and bandaged before anyone even saw you." 

She rolled her eyes. 

“But your house is an hour away?” I said questioningly.

“Yes, and I’m studying to be a doctor. I got you bandaged up enough to get on the subway. From there it was just keeping you from too much blood loss until I could get you somewhere you could get stitched up,” she replied, looking back at her book.

I noticed then that the sleeve of her shirt was missing, along with a large portion of the right leg of her pants. She must have used that as the original bandage.

I didn't know what to think of her in that moment. She had helped me, which made me want to trust her, but at the same time she now holds something over me, making it hard to trust her.

I almost stayed the night at her house, but feared falling asleep in the home of a near stranger. Even if that near stranger may have just saved my life. But she has money, lots of it, enough of it to be able to load me down with enough expensive painkillers for my head to make it back to my house.

I took the subway alone, loading up on more painkillers than was likely healthy. I snuck back into my house in the early hours of the morning and laid in my bed. When my dad came to wake me up for school he found me with a bottle of painkillers in my hand and a slightly bloodied bandage covering my head. I told him I hit my head getting off the subway last night and went to the Hospital. That explained the stitches on my head. I told him that I came home after everyone fell asleep and didn't want to wake anyone. He got me new gauze to bandage up and told me I could stay home from school for the day. I realized that my mother didn't come to help, she stays far from my room.

I found out where I knew Skinny Love from too. Emma had played it for me while she cleaned me up and brushed my hair and took care of me in those hours before she ran off. She had sung it in her clear, soft voice as she pulled the hair from my eyes and wiped off my vomit and made the decision that in the morning she would run and never look back.

Love Always,

Lilly