Work Text:
The hardest thing to admit was how much I miss it, I miss the thing that almost ruined my life. I used to walk around in fear of myself, the very core of who I am. The sensitivity that I always thought was my strength became the bane of my existence, every emotion it amplified turned sour faster and faster and the sweetness never came. The joy that usually could be spread out and shared started to delay its visits. Instead came the panic.
It really is such a strange little word, panic. Far too short for the amount of emotion that it contains, or rather that it is trying to contain, you can almost feel the emotions trying desperately to tear its edges to fit into the short five letters. Like the word itself knows what it is, knows the weight that it carries.
P
A
N
I
C
It’s strange that this little word is the reason I could not enter the dungeons for months. It is the reason that my friends started whispering, in hushed voices like I might break in pieces if the wrong word was uttered. The plain and simple way that they cared made it so much harder, because now I knew for sure that I was not only failing myself but everyone around me. Their blurred eyes and the pity in their voice is the reason I will not have to retake third year potions again next year. It was the quiet fury of being made small and delicate that was the final push to not let everything fall apart, that and the fear that it was all a lie for attention. Attention that I know I have never wanted and in the end did not even get. Only Ginny and Luna really knew, or knew and knew… with Luna you never really know but i think she understood. Herminoe probably suspected she really is too smart for her own good, but I don't think she and the others really knew how bad it got.
And still… i miss it
It really is scary to even think about it, but sometimes when my deranged brain gets quiet for too long I can't help but miss it…
Not the way I would notice my heart. The thing that is always there doing its job, always beating blood to every part of the body, always doing its job until you fall apart and die. The very same heart that for some reason started beating faster and faster, and would not stop. It was like running for your life without danger or actually running, but it still felt like it all the same. The way I could not seem to catch my breath, no matter how hard I tried, no matter the counting or the bloody thinking, nothing helped. I was drowning on land, the very thing that I needed to survive had betrayed me and would not find my lungs. The world was turning and I was disappearing from it right in front of everybody. Sometimes I swore I was not real, that I was a ghost or the figment of someone's imagination, but surely no one would imagine something like that, something so cruel.
My hand got cold, they started tingling, like some weird spell broke loose from a first year's wand. It felt like they were the only part of my body that had any sense of calm over them, like they accepted their fate leading the disappearance of my body.
But afterwards… Everything was so calm, eerily calm in the best and most terrifying way possible.
Because you had ran the mile, you had been through the battle and still survived. That calm became almost a poison in itself. The lightness of being out of breath with a heart that is slowly starting to slow down became a scary drug. It was the promise of even longer and scarier episodes, but also the celebration of still sitting in that cupboard or toilet alive.
It is mad how the more time passes the easier it is to put on the rose coloured glasses and to forget that it was almost always the second turn after the stairs where it started with the tingling hands. Now today the only part that is impossible to forget is the marks all over my arms where it became too much, where the steam had to be let out. The clawmarks and the bloody nails will be the only reminder of how bad it really got.