ocean eyes | m. mount

six

* declan and delilah content in this chapter. please vote and comment as you read!! your support means everything to me.
this chapter also contains mention of anxiety / panic attacks - please read at your own discretion *

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My fingers were trembling, my chest tight as I tried to breathe with ease. The darkness of our bedroom was engulfing me and forcing me into a hole of darkness and I couldn't break free. The fuzzy feeling in my stomach rose to my head, my eyes closing with tiredness as they became pained with the fatigue I was feeling, especially after being awoken so abruptly and immediately entering this state of panic. Pins and needles in my feet as a result of my blood rushing to every part of my body quicker than they reached the nerves in my feet. For the first time in a long time, my anxiety was scaring me. I never expected my panic attacks to return.

I just didn't want to wake Declan. I wanted to be strong and get through this by myself, while hoping it was just a one-off, bad night. I couldn't let this get the better of me and continue.

"Lilah, my love," Declan's quiet voice was stuffy with tiredness, and the guilt I felt for waking him only made my anxiety worsen. I was clamping my hands together so tight in an attempt to stop them from trembling so violently and slowly, they were turning white. "Hey, baby, I'm here. It's me, it's Declan, I'm here. I won't leave you."

He pushed the duvet backwards and ensured that it was no longer covering my legs, in an unsuccessful attempt to decrease my body temperature. I was burning up so badly that I felt sick, and I felt like moving to the bathroom was a good idea, but my body was too weak to take me there. I couldn't even lift my head to look at Declan, too focused on preventing the awful feeling in my chest from worsening.

"You don't need to say anything, but I'm here. There's water here when you need it. You're going to be okay," Declan knew how to deal with this when I couldn't. He knew to give me my space, while reassuringly talking to me to remind me that I wasn't alone, despite my inability to mutter a word. "You are safe, Delilah-Rae. I'm here, I've got you, I'll look after you. Do you know what's brought this on?"

I'd suffered with anxiety from a young age, and it felt like my entire life had been impacted by this awful illness. I remembered my first panic attack like it was yesterday, but I wasn't sure what it was at the time, or what was happening to me. I was ten, so small and so young, and definitely not capable of being in such a hysterical state. I thought I was going to die when it happened to me the first time. My mum tried to calm me, telling me that the feeling would pass and I would be okay, that it wouldn't, and couldn't, hurt me. I'd not even heard of anxiety until she told me that's what I was most likely suffering from.

Endless trips to the doctors consumed my young life. They couldn't put me on medication because of my age and because my body hadn't completely developed yet. They offered me therapy, but I was too scared, I didn't want to talk to a stranger about what was going on in my head. The only other option was to get on with it, so I tried, but I failed.

After seeming better, I relapsed, and fell back into the deep dark hole which I knew as anxiety. I was trapped, like I couldn't get out. At this point, I met Declan, and I was so afraid of opening up to him. He was a busy boy, always training and working on his football with his junior career quickly coming to an end. Mum told me that opening up might lift a weight from my shoulders, that Declan was a nice boy who would look after me and would never judge me for who I am, but I feared him leaving me. I became attached to Declan in ways that were bad for me. And the worst bit was, he only found out about my anxiety when I was rushed to hospital with chest pain.

The most terrifying experience of my life. They had me on all sorts of meds because I worked myself into such a traumatised, anxious state that my heart rate went completely through the roof. I just couldn't calm myself down, and the first time I did was when I was practically sedated because of all the meds they were giving me. I was peaceful for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, and I woke up from my well-needed rest with Declan by my side, his hand slipped between mine. He promised he would never leave, that mum explained everything to him, from my anxiety to my fears, and he was quick to reassure me that he wasn't going anywhere. He told me he had experience of anxiety after seeing his brother suffer from it, and that he knew how debilitating it could be. He promised not to leave me in my time of need. And he stuck by that.