I don't know if you've ever been on an antidepressant or mood suppressant, but if you have, you might know what I'm talking about. That monotonous, every-day-is-the-same feeling. In retrospect, I mastered being on a mood suppressant without being on a mood suppressant.
All my life I had been pretty good at creating coping mechanisms. When my ADD got really bad, I subconsciously veered away from sugar for a while. After Clara and Mom started fighting when she was thirteen-ish, I learned to drown out sounds with my own thoughts and some etudes on piano. I guess the same thing happened with anxiety, my brain decided the best way to tune it out was to do the same to everything else as well. As great as a trip to Greece was, I just wasn't really that excited. Everything blurred together into one zombie-like timeline.
I'm not sure anyone noticed this time, as it was totally better than what was happening before and no one really remembered what I was like before. Anyways, I'm a mediocre actress. I can kind of pretend I'm okay.
At least I can kind of get a grip on things now. My grades work out pretty well, average. I don't fail anything. Badly.
Not too many people know we're going, just our close friends and family. We don't need anyone looking for us or whatever. I might make a vlog, but probably not. Dan wants this trip to be a lot more private, and if we vlog the whole that'll be destroyed. And we won't be able to be romantic at all.
I had to do most of the travel stuff, since I'm marginally more organized than Dan is and I trusted myself to not book us tickets to Siberia instead of Athens unlike Dan. That man really needs to get more self-confidence. He's been staying overnight at my house more often. I think he's a lot more protective over me now that I've had the panic attack. I'm not sure I like it, but at least if some Greek pervert tries to molest me I'll be good. Although depending on how buff and/or intimidatable Greek perverts are, Dan might just give him a good laugh. Hopefully we don't come across any perverts.
The preparation for the trip goes well, although we have a scare thinking that our flights are cancelled and that there's now a dangerous coup in Greece. As it turns out, that was just PJ being a bit of an arse on Twitter changing his name to some news company. He was just lucky we read it late at night.
Phil and his girlfriend (who's become my pretty good friend since we're hair dye buddies. We go get our roots re-done every once in a while and get discounts since we're both going) go see us off at the airport, helping us drag basically everything we own onto the plane and into security. We have so much stuff between tripods and cameras, our suitcases could fit a vacation for the Shaytards.
We've decided that we'll film little bits of the vacation, but only for us. Dan needs his privacy, and I would prefer that we don't accidentally film something romantic and out ourselves. This way we'll be able to do whatever we want without being worried.
My biggest worry is the plane ride. It's raining buckets outside of the airport, and there's thunder. Supposedly you can't fly out if there's been thunder near air traffic control or something, so we have to sit for half an hour waiting for everything to be okay. I guess the excitement of the trip hasn't distracted me from my slight fear of flying, though, so Dan has to comfort me a little while the guy next to us watches, slightly annoyed at me for being so noisy. He's about our age, but seems like a bit of a dick. Kind of like us, but maybe a bit more annoying.
The plane ride goes without incident, and eventually we land in beautiful Greece. We even get a nice little view of the crystal blue waters, lining black rock beaches and white calendar photo buildings. The views remind me of the old "Greece" calendars my gran used to hang on her refrigerator. I suppose those photographs were taken here.
We stumble off the plane, our legs still a little numb from sitting for the last hour and a half. Poor Dan had to deal with my five year old-esque hyperactivity, so I think he's ready to be free of me. Or at least not stuck two centimeters away from me.
"Well, glad I'm out of there," I say, stretching as we wait for the rest of our stuff to circle around the conveyor belt to us, "Sorry I'm so annoying." Dan laughs.
"You aren't annoying, you're great. Although I'm really fucking glad that I don't have to be stuck on a plane with you jiggling your leg for three years."
"Was that even a sentence?" I ask, grabbing my bag.
"I don't think so," he says, grabbing his own. We make our way into the crowd, and for a moment, I'm stricken with panic. What if someone sees us holding hands? Kissing? We could explain holding hands, we were trying to stick together in the crowd, but kissing? You can't platonically kiss someone. I keep myself together until we reach a taxi.
"You okay?" asks Dan, turning towards me in his seat.
"I don't know." I shrug. He gives me a hug.
"Don't worry, the hotel isn't far. We'll be fine."
This is why I love Dan. He doesn't get too worried about me, let's me figure out my own stuff, but doesn't leave me all alone.
// yes I know it's crap but you know what shut up I'm in a pierce the veil angst emo phase so don't.
2016: wtf when did i ever listen to PTV ive literally listened to their music once and that was probably while writing this chapter//
