All It Seems

Part 33: Dementors in my mind

Hey guys! Thank you so much for your patience with this update, it's been a tough few weeks here in Aus and I've been trying to wrap my head around a lot of things to do with personal and non-personal life.

I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! The next chapter will carry on from this one :) 

Don't forget to comment and vote!

The traffic to uni after dropping Lucy at school was mad. I contemplated just leaving my car in the middle of the standstill and legging it to class. I managed, though I don't know how, to make it to class 3 minutes early and dropped my bag on the ground with a clunk as my laptop and textbook smacked the ground. I cringed as I sat down and prayed that my laptop wasn't broken as the tutor continued to prepare the seminar slides for us to work through. The thought of my laptop being broken made my stomach do a flipflop with anxiety since I knew I had no money to pay for a new one.

I reached down tentatively and removed my laptop from the pocket and peeked under the lid to see the lights pop on and thanked the gods for my luck. I ran my hand through my hair roughly and tried to gather myself to focus on the room as my anxiety tried to battle it way to the surface.

"Morning everyone, I'm sure we'll still have a few people coming as usual so we'll just do a quick discussion on the book..." the tutors voice faded to white noise as blood thundered through my ears and my my vision started to spin. I tried to blink hard and take in a few deep breaths but I couldn't stop the dizziness that was starting to overpower everything in my head.

Oh god, I thought, already knowing what was happening. I excused myself quietly and made my way to the bathrooms that luckily were only a few doors down from the room I was in. I pushed through the doors despite my arms feeling weak and the room spinning around me. Stumbling to the cubicles I tried to take as many deep breath as I could. My chest felt tight and each breath I took seemed to sit at the top of my lungs leaving me uncomfortable and feeling claustrophobic in the small cubicle. Before I started to hyperventilate, I slammed the toilet seat shut and took a seat with my head between my knees and my hands in my hair.

"Calm down. Calm down. Calm down." I whispered over and over as I tried to stop my diaphragm from spasming without much luck.

I sucked deep breaths in through my nose and pushed them out through my mouth but they would catch occasionally causing me to have to start counting again. I counted a hundred breaths, stopping every now and then and returning to 1. When my hands stopped shaking and my breathing calmed itself I lifted my head and sat there in the cubicle for a moment. I wiggled my toes and gently stretched my neck trying to remain as calm as possible. My stomach was still doing flip flops but I had calmed myself enough to stave off the panic attack I'd felt coming earlier. I'd been in the toilet cubicle for 20 minutes and didn't feel like going back to class. Even still, I gathered myself and dabbed some cold water on my cheeks, under my eyes and behind my neck and carefully walked back to the seminar room.

I entered slowly and quietly as to not draw attention to myself and sat down in my seat, exhausted and foggy. I failed to focus the whole class. I stared at the slides, reading them over and over but not actually taking any information in and when the tutor said "see you all next week" I gathered my things.

"Alexis, I wanted to talk to you about the email you sent me," my tutor called out to me as people exited the room. I stopped, confused and just stared at her waiting for an explanation. I never sent an email to her, in fact I barely even did any work for this class so I couldn't imagine I'd sent an email. But had I sent one? I'd been so stressed and tired lately that who knows if I had. It's possible, maybe I sent her one instead of someone else.