The A Side ✔

8- Me and the Meltdown

Have you ever had a moment where your world slips away?

I've had that and it's not pleasent. Happening in the middle of a school day in front of your peers who have never witnessed someone so quiet become so loud and flustered with fear. It was the first lesson of the day and I started to feel sick. The class wasn't disgusting in any way but I started to feel disorientated as I stumbled out of the classroom planning to head to the girls toilets to try and calm myself down. But on the way, I happened to bump into some very gossipy girls that I didn't get on with well so I had to think of somewhere else to go to.

Lessons had a five minute gap known as a switchover so in other words, you had five minutes to get to your next lesson before the classroom door closed. Once closed, if you were late without a valid excuse, you were forbidden from going into the classroom and had to stand outside until the end of the lesson or be sent to the detention room with work in hand to complete. I had been late to lessons a few times but that was due to dentist appointments since at the time of this meltdown, I wore braces.

The next lesson was Geography, normally one of my favourite subjects but I didn't feel well at all and with the girls toilets filled with girls I didn't want to mix with, I headed off towards the other side of the school, away from the classroom block that I was meant to go to for class. Any panic attack I had had during school often resulted in being sent to the medical room and getting told to go straight back to class after ten minutes of sitting in a solid hard chair, sipping a glass of water. Obviously, the school sometimes thought that I had overreacted over the littlest thing.

I went up towards the hut which housed the detention room, three offices, a printing room and another room sometimes used as a school classroom, other times a chill-out room but I never felt chilled sitting down in there trying to think of things to discuss with the members of staff that worked there.

I knocked on the door of one of the offices and entered with a shaky grace mumbling out the words, "Panic attack happening." Next thing I knew, I felt a rush of bad memories from the past crash into my brain, scenes replaying over and over like a cassette tape that had gotten stuck. My breath became quicker and quicker and literally, the lady behind one of the computer desks thought that I was having a heart attack. I was ushered into the chill-out room away from the detention room and offices so that no-one could bother me.

Looking down onto my skin, my arms and back of both of my hands were the palest white that I ever seen on me. I felt my nose start to run, tears trickling down out of my cheeks and my stomach churning, it was horrible. My mind by now had given up on me, feeling like a nightmare, I whispered to the lady, "I'm going to die."

She waved her hand as if to say, "No, you're not going to die. Just stay tight." But I couldn't. Not with the Anxiety waves rolling and crashing against the walls that for many months I had tried to build up. The school did know about my Anxiety from a previous experience but up until that moment hadn't realised just how serious it was turning into causing everyone tons of grief and myself huge bouts of ill health.

I could hear only the noises of my heavy breathing and the ticking of a clock coming from the table next to mine where I sat with a glass of water and a huge box of tissues. As a fourteen year old, no way should you ever experience that. No-one should have to go through a meltdown just like that one. My body became achy and all I wanted to do was to crawl back into my bed and hide under the covers for eternity.

"Does your teacher know where you are?" the lady asked.

"No," I gulped without shaking, "It just happened at the end of my first lesson."

That teacher, my Geography teacher wasn't told about why I was absent until the following lesson which took place a few days later. I was told off lightly for not being in attendance since it was the 1st of a two year GCSE programme which I had to have stellar attendance but I caught up quickly to make up for my absence.

I'm not in contact with that lady anymore which in some words is a shame since she was a very understanding person up until my final days in school and after leaving my school, I haven't seen her since. But she did help me that day of the meltdown because she didn't let me go back to classes before I was fully ready. That took almost two hours.

But at least people started to understand now that my Anxiety wasn't an act to try and be an attention seeker. Well... some people understood, not others.

And that my friends is where my writing comes in.