My step grazes the outer edge of the sidewalk, my glimmering eyes saluting my companion's. "Do you think there's anything worthwhile at the cinema right now?" I question, dismissing a pebble to frolic in the street.

"Maybe, but the local nerds are probably taking up all the seats for any superhero films." A chuckle unties itself from Pete's trachea, and his gaze falls to the pavement as we near the movie theater.

Reflexively, my vision zooms in on a hoard of people possibly gossiping idly about what they predict will transpire next in their favorite motion picture saga, as if it will matter until a year later, and though this random occurrence shouldn't be nerve-wracking for anyone, it is for me — I go to a psychologist to fix it after all, but recalling how I burst out of his office earlier today, it's a productive thing to realize that I'm not on track so far, perhaps more productive than anything our sessions teach me.

Pins of sweat carve into my skin, alerting my heart to deploy battle drummers to pound against its walls in a signal of an attack, and my brain spirals out of control right before me.

I wasn't equipped for this many people.

"Patrick, are you okay?" Pete's sudden awareness of my situation leads me to believe that he's probably the second coming of Christ, in my own atheistic way, as we gravitate to the lines of movie posters bolted to the wall once I regain complete consciousness.

The simple presence of one showing replaces the battle drummers with charming fiddlers, and my finger ascends to point towards the sign. "What about this one?"

Pete squints to read the title of the flick so far down the row, whispering with each syllable, "Suffragettes of Germany. I didn't know you were interested in feminism, Patrick."

My hands seek refuge in the stuffy pockets of my skinny jeans, folding my shoulders together. "Yeah, I guess. Do you have a problem with that?"

Pete's face melts into a smile. "No, not at all. I'm interested in feminism, too, and was actually really looking forward to watching this movie. It's even better now that I'm with you."

A stream of air humble for my circumstance topples from my lips, and I almost forget to recompense Pete for the grin with one of my own, but he's evanesced before I can interpret what he just said.

He's actually excited to be here with me?

"I'll go and get the tickets," my friend clarifies as his hip brushes the velvet rope used to contain customers, already long gone from me.

"We can split the pay," I call back, finally making use of my hands' position in my pockets to retrieve my wallet, but Pete waves it off.

"Nonsense! You're my date; this one's on me. I enjoy being classy."

A clump of phlegm pinches my throat at the use of the word "date", a word that's made me nervous for as long as I can retrospect, mostly because of the flexibility of dating in middle school — the last period I attended until I withdrew for my own home — and the pressure that came with it.

What does a date mean to Pete? What does it mean to me? What does it mean to other people? And perhaps most imperatively, what does it mean to Dr. Saporta, who is so immersed in my social life (or lack thereof)?

Stop thinking about Dr. Saporta so much, or at least long enough to pay attention to your "date".

Great, just what I needed, the voices to return on my may or may not be date. I was doing better (I swear), or at least that's what—

No. You need to stop, Patrick. He shouldn't enslave your thoughts.

Truth is, though, I'm worried about his judgement, whether I'd like to admit it or not. Yeah, maybe this isn't what my mother meant by becoming more intimate with Dr. Saporta, but it's a step away from isolation, and everyone could concur that such a thing is healthier than what I've been experiencing previously, so who really gives a shit?

Maybe you're overthinking this, dimwit. Anxiety is trouble, even if it's geared towards the right things.

"That's the most helpful thing you've ever said to me," I vocalize, head rotating ninety degrees in both directions to check if anyone saw me talking to myself like the psycho I know myself to be.

And now my voice's language has caught on. What a hypocrite I am, reprimanding the voice for addressing me that way yet doing it to myself.

Pete waltzes back a moment later, two tickets strapped between his fingers as if taking a smoke, and with some magnificent luck (Pete is Jesus, after all), notices my discerned facial expression, his soon reflecting mine. "Are you ready to find our seats?"

Passive approach. Are you sure you should trust him if he plays that way?

I'll always trust him.

~~~~~

Anticipation lingers in the air like the crisp scent before rain, but the only emotion suffusing my skin is panic, and by the way my legs jitter without ceasing, people have started to notice, though it's not like anything matters when your world is disintegrating behind your eyelids, especially because no one else can witness the atrocity with the same vivid apprehension as the host, and it becomes rather difficult to express feelings that way.

In a precarious attempt to calm me down, Pete's hand almost restrains my legs before pursuing the blazing fire in my eyes, which tells him off in the harshest of implicit forms.

Look what you did, psycho. You just ruined any chance of connection.

"I'm, um, I'm really sorry, Patrick," Pete murmurs, repositioning his hand to glide through his charcoal hair instead.

Absorbing a strong breath, I restore his hand's place to its prior location on my knee, and the timid person is now Pete, his beige eyes bulging from their sockets, as if asking, "Are you sure?" to which I nod steadily to glaze over my own ambivalence.

By the time a few seconds have ticked away on my mental clock, my body begins to tremble again with the intensity of the tectonic plates shifting — except beautiful mountains are born from that action, whereas panic attacks are born from mine.

This is where your ignorance gets you, dimwit.

Once again, Pete transforms into Jesus, cognizant of my silent struggle and unlatching his hand from my leg before I can complain about the quaking of my bones.

"You should take care of yourself, yeah?" Pete digs his head low, laboring to capture my contact. "Don't let coercion influence you to do things that you don't want to do."

I don't look at him, but only after thirty seconds do I realize that the shaking halted. He's won.

In a couple of minutes, dusk smothers the room, and I almost forget my anxiety. I'm really enjoying the "almost".

~~~~~

I was mostly inclined to survive the duration of this film, but anxiety fucks my life without rest, so why even expect a joyride? What is so special about right now that excuses me from the relentless nipping of dread in my stomach?

Is it the fact that I finally ventured to a public place after years of solitude? Is it the fact that I'm with Pete? Is it the fact that I had come close to a panic attack but didn't quite? Is it the fact that my mind is so keen on presenting me with demise?

The reality is quite simple: we build our own torture chambers around ourselves and scream when they won't let us out, and while we're inside them, the construction of a box comes into play without the understanding that they will soon become our coffins, so we suffocate over and over yet still expect the gift of oxygen that never comes.

We actually believe we're alive, but we place the blame of our following downfall on other people to remove the satisfaction of our cackling mind for tricking us once again.

And besides the cackling, I reckon there is a soundtrack that follows us humans throughout our life, and we are utterly unaware of how it proceeds. Sometimes it pulses, and sometimes it is silent, like the sickening verdict of a heart monitor, but no matter the pace of the song, we can never hear it until we first hear the shattering of our hope, when our mind is jealous of our body's ability to die, when it desires a demise of its own and is spoiled enough to receive its wish, fucking us all.

This music, however, fucks us again, and arguably more so. It tricks us into believing that we have achieved something tremendous, that our wait must've meant something to the universe, that our death is a small price to pay for the fluttering melody that becomes clear to us in a state of misfortune.

It dabs the tears from our eyes and passive-aggressively demands that we observe the light show that they make out of them, and once again, we do not say a word, only thank it for doing such a miraculous thing.

It is creating art out of our pain, and not once do we question it, but don't we humans deserve so much more than locked lips? Have we not experienced enough hell?

We injure ourselves without rest, and the music comes along, so we stop to listen to the beautiful sounds that are so disparate from what we know, but we never realize that the tune is not so different than the only other noise we hear — the clanking of chains wrapped around our soul.

We are not caged animals, and losing faith in thinking that we were imprisoned is what made us lose faith in the world, because life is working against us, and the music frankly wanted a job.

And maybe we expected something else from giving up, something other than the music, maybe our body's extravaganza of merciful death, but all we got was the annoying melody that warps our mind into thinking that it's long-lost and missed dearly.

Maybe our brains were trying to protect us, shut out the music until we die and can hear what it's been doing for us forever, but now that it's free, it knows no bounds, and our brain is struggling to keep it under control.

Then...it just stops. Our brain gives up just like we did, and the clashing of mind against music settles down to reinforce the dainty notes of our eternal soundtrack.

And as the end of our song draws near, we understand that none of this ever mattered, that we can put up with the music for a few moments longer until we descend into the ground. Suddenly, we also recognize that this is us giving up in the grandest of manners, and the last note crashes in like a wave, sharp and unforgiving as a knife.

Then finally, the music ceases.

I wonder if I'll hear it soon, for water now furnishes my lungs with a blood-stained tapestry at the sight of one simple event on the face of the screen.

People. Hands. Reaching. Arms. Shrieking. Silence. Assault. Pete's frightened face on my behalf, mine too stunned to react.

A snake twists around my chest, whispering in my ear and punctuating each word with a constricting force. "You're dying," it taunts. "You're dying. You're dying. You're dying." All I can do is accept it, given my situation.

Tiny knives clump together on my skin, and a metallic hand materializes out of the chaos of their endeavors. Before I can brush the assailants off, its fingerprints claw at me with a hatred whose origins are unknown, each patch of flesh a dagger set on murder.

"Patrick, snap out of it!" a voice pleads as spiders pry against my throat, who lose their balance due to the interminable convulsion of my body at the expense of Pete Wentz's energy.

Don't listen to him, psycho.

I can't breathe, and somehow, that's okay. My airways haven't been clear for over two rotations of the earth around the sun, and I've gotten used to drowning. It's all the same.

"It's okay!" I scream, kicking whatever I come in contact with and not bothering if it's my friend. "Just let go of me, Pete. Let me die, you godforsaken prat."

"I can't."

Then night slaughters dusk.

~~~~~

The next thing I know, a tangy object is forced into my mouth by a hand that cares too much to witness me flail around, but also a hand that has no regard for my preferences.

I can't see anything, my vision a blur in an emerald coat, but I identify the flavor of the candy as cherry, a scourge upon this land. I'm well-disposed towards the idea of spitting it out and studying its plummet onto the concrete, but Pete's already crying, and I promised my mother I would work on sensitivity.

So here I am, lacking in visual capabilities but toughing it up anyway, and I'm beginning to question if it would be more precise to characterize this affliction as my metamorphosis into an emotionless brick, but after an acute moment of contemplation, I decide it's not so offbeat from what I was previously and elect to drop the subject to focus on my teary companion.

"You didn't have to buy me candy," I attest, wrestling with the bonbon swooping through my mouth from each movement of my tongue.

"Yes, I did." Pete holds out another piece, this time grape, without smearing his tears across his skin to conceal them.

I slant away, crinkling my nose, even though purple is my favorite type.

My date forces a sigh from his esophagus, fitting his hands to the grooves on his hips and preparing to deliver a speech. "Your blood sugar drops when you're stressed, and from what I could tell, you were pretty damn stressed back there."

Don't give him the bragging rights by taking the sweets. He's just trying to lure you into a setting of submission.

As if that isn't what the voice in my mind does on a daily basis.

"So what?" I tug on the collar of my granite-flecked hoodie to scratch an invisible itch, and I honestly don't care if Pete can see through my fallacy, because I'm done.

Done with this movie theater. Done with Pete's willingness to assist. Done with myself. Done with all of it.

"I wish I had drowned." Each sound is crushed under my ravenous teeth, the rubble forming craters in Pete's visage as it smacks him head-on, and I can confidently say that he wasn't expecting such ferocious intentions from me.

Pete's brows cave in. "There was no water anywhere for you to drown in."

That's not the point, you dunce. You're almost as psycho as this other dimwit, and that's really saying something.

Hysterical giggles erupt from inside me, crowding the atmosphere of the cinema's awning. "Never really is, no. At least not to you."

My friend nearly touches me but retracts his extremities at the last second to instead ask, "Patrick, are you okay?"

Now dangling from the opposite pole, jagged breaths tear at my throat and demand sufficient diligence, but all I desire is to escape. "Just please take me home."

You're dying.

You know what? That doesn't matter. In case you haven't noticed, I've been dying for a while before today, and I just now lifted my head over the surface. I deserve to live. I deserve to breathe.

"If that's what you require."

The only thing I require is life, and having Pete Wentz makes it meaningful, but I don't want him to know that, so I only wind my fingers into the pocket of his jacket and sigh.

I survived.

~~~~~

A/N: I didn't expect this chapter to be as long and as sad as it turned out to be, but there you go (and thank the corn lord for pete wentz)

In addition, PTSD panic attacks are different from regular panic attacks, so there's more likely to be a feeling of choking (which was included in here). Just wanted to clarify that, because PTSD anxiety is usually from a difference source than others.

current vibe: pretending to do things for aesthetic purposes yet capitalising letters sometimes (look I didn't even use punctuation I'm pretty badass)

~Dakota