It’s ten o’clock and you get a text from your best friend. Water Balloon fight at 4:30!!
Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck. Shit.
A water balloon fight, that’s supposed to be fun and it would be if it was just you and her, maybe her older sister, but God is it gonna be a bunch of her friends? Family? Shit now your head hurts. Fuck. Your chest, too, it’s like your heart is being squeezed. Now you can’t see.
Who’s coming? You text her. The phone buzzes immediately.
Not a lot. You, me, Marley, Cory, and my little siblings.
Not a lot of people, and you know Marley and Cory, but oh fuck, you don’t know her little siblings well. God, what if you make a fool of yourself? You’re real shit at sports. Not that this is a serious sport, but your athletic abilities are practically non existent. So you’re going to look really stupid. Ah… now you can’t breathe. And your hands are shaking. What if there’s teams? You hate teams because you don’t want to let anyone down, but you probably will. You’re lightheaded, are you going to faint?
Okay well holding all of this in is gonna make you lose your mind. Just be honest. She’d understand. Tell her you’re nervous, she’ll probably say there’s no reason to be nervous, and maybe that’ll help. Maybe it won’t. At least someone will know.
You text her, Okay… I’m a little nervous…
She asks why. It’s hard to pinpoint the reason, there is one, but your head is full of mush now so you just send her the shrug emoji.
You don’t have to come if you don’t want, she says.
Which, you know this, and she kind of just gave you an out. But if you don’t go, will they judge you for that? Maybe they’ll think you’re lame. And your friend will probably be mad at you for not going. So you have to go. Gotta suck it up.
Ignore me, I’m fine you text back. Cause now you wanna forget you said anything at all. What’s the point of saying something if you’re gonna go anyway, that’s just a waste of time. Good fuck, should your chest feel this heavy? Yeah, you’re definetly gonna pass out.
didn’t think you weren’t.. she texts back. Shit. Shit, this is bad. You’re acting like a nut and she thinks so too. Fuck. She’s mad at you. But… there’s no real reason for her to be mad at you, right? She definitely seems annoyed. Just change the fucking subject. Send her a meme on twitter. Your throat oh God your throat it’s not fucking… Fuck. You’re so lightheaded, you’re really gonna faint. Your chest… you’re still shaking. Help.
It’s four o’clock. By the grace of God, you didn’t faint. Instead you played four different games on your phone and laptop. You’ve ordered things off of Amazon. You cooked dinner before lunch and had absolutely none of it because your throat is too small for you to try to force food through it. You had a conversation with your therapist about how you hate people, and she returned that you don’t like how important it is to you that people ‘like you’. You scrunched up your nose because that’s so unfortunate since people suck anyway. You’re breathing okay now, though, and you stopped shaking. Your head still hurts and your chest is still heavy, but you don’t think you’ll pass out now.
So are you waterballooning? She texts you.
The mattress you’re on falls to pieces under your weight, sending you into a darkness that presses down on your chest as you think about yourself throwing balloons full of water at people you don’t know very well.
Yeah I’ll water balloon, you say. Super casually. Can’t even tell from that sentence that you’ve fallen to pieces, nice.
yayyyy she sends you. Something small loosens in your chest. She’s happy you’re coming, she doesn’t feel like you would be a drag especially after your weird reaction that morning. She’s not annoyed with you, or mad at you, she’s just happy you’ll be there. And you two always have fun together, so there’s no reason to think this will be different. But maybe you’ll still make a fool of yourself… You can still feel your heart in your stomach. But you do need to stop overthinking.
(You don’t stop overthinking.)