TAYLOR'S POV
I could hear the distant murmur of Karlie downstairs on the phone with her family for the third time today. I didn't blame her, I'd talked to my parents for two hours straight this afternoon. But I wasn't focused on what Karlie was saying, or on the pictures moving on the muted TV in front of me in my bedroom, or even Caroline who had her nose buried in her phone beside me. I was counting. Counting the number of seconds I could breathe in and the number of seconds I could breathe out. I tried to focus on nothing but counting, but it proved to be difficult.
A statement and three posts had been released at noon today, confirming what the world already knew. Now, at 9 at night, I still hadn't picked up my phone to see the world's reaction. Caroline on there other hand hadn't put her phone down all day. She kept refreshing social media and frantically scrolling and looking at every article with my name attached to it. It sounded miserable to me, but I guess everyone had their own coping mechanisms.
Immediately after releasing all of our posts and the statement, I spiraled into an anxiety attack worse than I had ever experienced before. Karlie and Caroline panicked, but I refused to go to the doctor or the ER or even an urgent care center. So Karlie called her dad, who was an ER doctor, and consulted with him about what to do. That's how I learned I should count.
Now, on the verge of another anxiety attack, I was counting, or at least trying to. I tried to count up to five while inhaling and five while exhaling. This was tough, but it was a huge improvement from earlier today when I was struggling to count to three while inhaling before short, shallow breaths took over.
Focusing on counting and breathing was hard. Soon, my mind had wandered to the Grammys. It had been decided this afternoon that Karlie and I would be attending the Grammys together in two weeks. Tree had said that we needed to give the public time to get used to the fact that were dating, but a public appearance should happen in about two weeks. Consequently, the Grammys fell at the two week mark. I wasn't planning on attending this year, but as I have learned today, plans change very easily.
I should have been more focused on my counting than on the Grammys, because just as I started thinking about the cameras that would be in our faces all night, Caroline began to panic.
"Taylor? Are you okay?" She asked in a frightened tone.
It was then that I realized that my chest was moving up and down at a rapid pace. If I would have been counting the lengths of my breaths just now, it would have been in milliseconds. I caught Caroline staring at my hands, they were shaking uncontrollably, but all I could think about was cameras flashing in my eyes and people shouting things at me from all directions. The photographers with the blinding cameras in the scenario in my mind all reminded me that I'd been outed. I couldn't catch my breath, but that was the least of my worries in the midst of the nightmare I was currently living.
"Taylor, it's okay, just breathe." I heard Caroline's frantic voice say. I felt her hands grasp one of mine to try to stop the shaking. She was trying to calm me down, but knowing that I was scaring her just made me more upset.
I was gasping for breath and I was sure my face had fear written all over it when Caroline called for Karlie. In no time, Karlie had burst into the room and sat behind me on the bed, I was sat between her legs and her long arms wrapped around my body from behind. I felt my body melt into her embrace, but my chest was still rising and falling at an alarming rate.
"Breathe with me babe." Karlie said softly. Then she started counting. Her soft voice made me relax, and eventually I was breathing just as slowly as she was.
When I had calmed down, I noticed that Caroline was still sitting on the other side of the bed with a frightened expression on her face. When we met eyes she quickly looked back down at her phone and continued scrolling. I knew she understood what I was going through, she had bad anxiety when she was a sophomore, but seeing someone you love have an anxiety attack was much different than experiencing one yourself.
Later that night after I had showered and Karlie was already half asleep in bed, I snuck out of the bedroom and headed for Caroline's door.
I was trying as hard as I could to accept the fact that there was no going back now, Karlie and I were out of the closet and now we just had to embrace it. Embracing being outed was a difficult thing to do, but I knew I had to do it, if not for me, for Caroline. In the midst of this awful day, I hadn't properly checked in with Caroline, but I knew she had to be feeling badly too.
"Hey you." I said as I opened her bedroom door and stepped into the room. I shut the door behind me and walked over to where Caroline was sitting on her bed. Not surprisingly, she was still looking at her phone and she seemed tense. She looked up at me when I sat down on her bed and gave me a weak smile.
"You're going to make yourself feel worse looking at all this." I said with a frown, gesturing at her phone. I saw her shrug, but a sad look remained on her face as her eyes flitted across the screen. I reached over and pulled the phone out of her hands before putting it down on the bedside table.
"I've read every single comment on my post so far." Caroline said in a hoarse voice. When she looked over at me the gleam that was usually in her eyes was nowhere to be found.
"There has been 4,094. So far." She added. I furrowed my eyebrows and examined her face, this couldn't be healthy.
"Care, you don't have to read what people say." I said, scooting closer to her and pulling her into me slightly. I knew that no matter what I said she would keep reading everything.
"People are so awful." She said, suddenly beginning to sob. I was surprised but I pulled her in even closer and stroked her hair with my free hand. I was almost ready to start counting in my head before I realized that it was Caroline who was so upset, not me. I guess Karlie's dad's counting tip really did work.
"I know-" I started before she cut me off.
"Even the people who have nice things to say. They think they have the right to proclaim their opinion about all of this like they're all high and mighty. No, this isn't their life." Caroline continued. It was almost hard to make out what she was saying through her tears. I would be crying too if I hadn't become so numb at this point in an awful day. The situation was still sad and anxiety inducing, but I was trying to accept it, and maybe that meant becoming a little more numb.
"I know. I-" I said in the most soothing voice I could produce as she cut me off again.
"It's just not fair!" Caroline cried out before burying her face in the shoulder of the hoodie I was wearing. I let her cry while I rubbed her back and held her tightly. She was right, it wasn't fair. She had been through enough in this life without having people feel entitled to voice their opinions about her mom and her mom's girlfriend. None of it was fair. But the voice in the back of my head kept telling me that if I ever wanted to move on, I'd have to realize that unfairness was just life.
"Caroline." I said in the strongest tone I could muster up once she had calmed down a little.
"I know I was really upset earlier. And to be honest I probably won't fully feel better any time soon. But everything was happening all at once and I wasn't prepared for one bit of it. Now that I've had a little time to process everything, I've realized that I'm just going to have to let all of this go one of these days, and so are you. Forgiveness doesn't happen overnight, and I know we won't wake up tomorrow morning, or even a week from now feeling like we have made peace with the fact that I was outed, but we should try. That means you need to stop reading what people think, because none of those people's opinions matter. I am content with not reading any articles or comments or posts because I know that Karlie and I love each other and we're in a happy, healthy relationship and that's all the matters. It hurts to see people saying mean things about me and about you, but you don't have to put yourself through any of that. So please tell me you won't get back on your phone and start reading what a few entitled idiots on the internet have to say." I said.
"I won't." Caroline said in a voice so quiet it was almost inaudible. A silence hung over us as Caroline was still cuddled in close to me. Somehow acting like I was strong for Caroline's sake made me actually feel a little stronger. I still felt unbelievably weak under the crippling reality of what had happened to me in the last 24 hours and I knew I could spiral into another anxiety attack at any moment, but I was a little stronger than before.
