Wishful Thinking

[meraki]

So ive been working on a story, and decided to post it in pieces on here! This story and characters are completely fictional and are only a fragment of my imagination. Any names or places mentioned in this are simply made up by me. Though this is realistic fiction, so keep in mind that these events can happen.

This story is about a 17 year old named Lucy, who believes she suffers from a panic disorder, thus causing her to never leave the house. Her mother insists that if she ever does, she will surely have a panic attack due to experiences as a child. She and her mother live alone, in a house far from any neighborhoods. Lucy has never in her life had a friend or companion, this making her social experiences extremely poor. Her only memories of the outside world are through stories and pictures in a photo album that hasn’t been updated since she was fairly young.

That’s all the info I’m gonna share for right now, so you’ll just have to wait for more!

My name is Lucy Sullivan and I suffer from panic disorder. Anxiety is a super big umbrella, within that is panic disorder. I don’t really remember actually experiencing a panic attack, but Mom says it’s normal to forget. I’m not allowed to leave the house, ever. Mom’s worried I’ll have a panic attack or worse, so I stay inside. There’s too many dangerous out there anyway, wolves, dogs, bad men, people with guns, the list goes on and on.

​ When I was little, probably four or five, Mom took me to Rainbow Road preschool. I don’t quite remember much about it, that was 12 years ago anyway. But when Mom tells it, she describes it as a ‘chilly autumn morning in the middle of September’ so I assume that’s what the day was like. I was all dressed up in a chocolate brown corduroy sleeveless dress, with a white and pink striped turtleneck beneath that, white stockings, and mary-janes. Again, I don’t know this by memory. I was four. Mom has a lot of pictures of me in that outfit in our family photo album that hasn’t been touched since I was eight. My wavy gold hair was pulled in two double braids, the hair that changed from gourgeous gold to boring brown as I’d aged, the hair that I so spontaneously decided to cut 14 inches off last summer and never grew out. In the pictures, I was grinning so big, you’d think I’d won the lottery. My brown eyes were bright and happy, all squinty and gleeful. No one would ever have guessed how that day would’ve ended up.
​We’d entered the small brick building, the interior walls covered in bland flowery wallpaper. Drawings made by children hung on the walls, the colors clashing and bright, smudged red and blue creating a kind of purple as the crayon wax mixed to form a new shade. Bright yellow suns smile down at girls in pink dresses and boys in blue pants. Red flowers bloom from a grass of neon green, into a perfect sky of turquoise and large, fluffy clouds of white. Mom took me by my clammy child hand and led me to a room full of complete and utter noise. Kids ran about, screeching at the tops of their lungs while others chased after. Others sat on the floor and vroomed trucks across lenolium floors, some scribbled on crinkled sheets of paper, and others sat by and watched the madness, slobbery fingers shoved inside their kid mouths as they watched with intuitive eyes. I don’t recall much of what happened after that, but Mom tells me I freaked out. But not just a normal tantrum, no, I had a full on panic attack.

​Mom decided to homeschool me after that.

​I’ve been homeschooled all my life since that day. It’s always been just me and Mom. She already had her masters degree so she was able to homeschool me. We studied from 10 AM to 5PM, with occasional breaks in the middle for lunch and relaxation. On the weekends, Mom would order us pizza, and we’d sit and watch movies, like a regular family would. Except, we weren’t a regular family. Regular families consist of a mother, a father, and one child if not two, and sometimes a pet. My family consisted of my own problematic self and Mom, that’s it. We never actually went out to dinner, or actually saw a movie in the theatres; I couldn’t handle the commotion. At least, that’s what Mom always said.

​I don’t really recall much of what it’s like to actually leave the house.