It's been three years since that night and Cordelia still remembers the excruciating pain she suffered for months. She is sure that going back to her native land, La Push, and being with her family will make her feel better, will fill the void in he...
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WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS A DESCRIPTION OF A PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CRISIS THAT RESEMBLES A PANIC ATTACK AND A SEIZURE. IF YOU'RE SENSITIVE ABOUT THIS CONTENT PLEASE AVOID READING THE FIRST PART, THE ONE BEFORE THE LONG ITALIC PART.
Some nights it's impossible for me to fall asleep; my body is exhausted, so is my mind, but there is something that prevents me from closing my eyes and fall into that good night. It's something that haunts me since the night my grandparents died, the night of the accident. It's something that keeps repeating from time to time, unexpectedly, and every time it catches me off-guard. I should be used to it by now, but it seems like every time is worse than the previous one.
And this, this is one of those nights.
My body is burning, I am cold sweating and I think my heart is trying to implode in my chest. I curl up under my pink flower sheets, the ones my mother gave me before moving, compressing the part of the chest where the heart is with both my hands intertwined. I can feel the beats under my sweaty palms, and it hurts. Each heartbeat feels like a fist in the guts, a knife in the back. My muscles start shaking, and a known sensation is spreading throughout my body, a sensation I have learnt to know well in these three years. I whimper, knowing that in a few moments I will completely lose control of my entire body. The awareness makes me anxious, and this anxious state does nothing but making things worse. I try to take deep breaths, like my phycologist in New York told me to do, but every time I try, my chest burns. I gasp to try to breathe, but no air is going inside or outside of my body. I feel like a fish out of the sea, left alone on the shore while it is trembling and clinging to his last tiny drop of water to stay alive one second more.
This is just a panic attack, Cordelia. Breath in.
I gasp.
Breath out.
I gasp again, knowing exactly that this is not a panic attack. It's been three years since the first time I had this kind of mental and physical crisis, and no doctor has ever discovered what the hell is happening to me. Everyone keeps saying that it's because of my father, but I know it's nothing like that, it's something more, it has to be. This is not normal; I am not normal but neither my mother nor my doctors believe it.
The burning in my body is growing, I feel like I'm completely covered in fire even though everything around me is dark, the only light is a ray of moonlight coming from the curtains that I did not close properly before coming to bed.
Hold on to the light. Hold on to the light. I repeat myself like a mantra.
All of a sudden, my limbs start stretching without my consent, almost as there is some dark invisible figure who is trying to rip them off of my body. The pain is so strong that I can't help but start screaming until I feel my vocal cords burning.
