Josie Guerrero is focused on one thing: getting accepted into the prestigious art studies program within the Art School at the University of Southern Washington. With thirteen weeks to create her sophomore portfolio, she knows she can't afford any d...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I'm suffocating one hollow breath at a time.
Each clipped wheeze feels lighter than the last as if the air is evaporating around me, slipping through my desperate fingers and wisping away on some nonexistent breeze.
I know what's happening to me; it used to happen all the time as a kid. First the air thins, my vision blurs, my hands begin to tremble, and then the telltale white dots explode in front of my eyes like confetti before it all inevitably goes black. I always wake up face down on the floor and then it takes a while before my body and my brain find their equilibrium again — like the buttons of a shirt incorrectly aligned and snapped together in haste.
It started happening after my dad deemed me old enough to train when I was in first grade. Though I thought I was past them by the time I got to high school. Fight or flight, I'd learned after countless late nights researching the frustrating as fuck phenomenon that only seemed to plague me whenever I'd let my mind wander to my late-night training sessions with my dad. It was connected to my nervous system, I'd learned. A trigger of my most basic instincts.
Fight, flight, freeze — or collapse. My brain recognized my father an unavoidable threat, one that was impossible to overcome, outrun, or escape, and so it began to favor the fourth option. Collapsing — passing out — was a defense mechanism to avoid pain.
An unimpressed wheeze of a laugh slips through my lips at the irony of it all as I splay my palms out on the heated tile of the shower wall, watching the streams of steaming water fall off my body and circle the drain. I'm unable to feel pain beyond a certain level without my mind turning off, and in some cosmic attempt at balance, I can't feel the other extreme either. I'm unable to experience love fully — to express it, to receive it without feeling like I'm doing to pass out.
Familiar white dots form on the perimeter of my vision and I squeeze my eyes shut, my fingers clutching the tile like a vise.
Breathe, motherfucker, breathe.
"Micah?"
My heart is beating so fast, a near-deafening drum in my ears, I almost miss the soft lilt of her voice echoing through the cracked bathroom door, her concern dripping from my name like the water spilling down my body.
I don't open my eyes — I can't open my eyes — though I don't have to to know she's stepped into the bathroom. Her faint footsteps stilled halfway toward the shower, likely scared by the broken image I can't even attempt to mask. I don't want her to see me like this — arms against the tiled wall just to stay upright, chest barely moving in shallow bursts, eyes screwed shut — but I'm lost in the deep end right now and I can't pull myself out, not even to preserve my pride.
I feel like a little kid again, like a little boy locked in the school bathroom, too ashamed for anyone to see me hyperventilate and fall to the floor.
The shower curtain slides open and closed, and before I can pry my eyes open, small hands are wrapping around my waist from behind, the warm skin of her bare body molding to mine under the steaming spray of water.
