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'Was that your first panic attack?' Sofia asked as she leaned forward in her chair. Her pink pompom topped pen flew across the page as she hurriedly took down note after note. Austin longed to know what she was writing down in her notebook. What was going on in her head. What she thought of him and all that he was telling her.
'No. Just one of the first really bad ones. And it certainly wasn't the last.' Austin took a deep breath in as he studied Sofia's face, trying to work out what she was going to ask him next. 'The one good thing about having a best friend who also struggles with anxiety is that you know how to help each other.'
'You certainly do.' Sofia nodded in agreement. 'Now, I would understand completely if you're not comfortable with speaking about this but would you mind talking about your experience with you anxiety and how you coped with things?'
'I'll speak about some things. I know that I physically cannot bring myself to tell you everything. It's just too hard, especially right now.' Austin stared down at the ground wishing he could be just about anywhere else. 'No one knows everything about my struggles with anxiety. Not my father, not Charlie. No one.'
'That's perfectly understandable.' She smiled sweetly at him. 'I'll only ask a few questions. If you don't want to answer any of them, then you don't have to. Is that alright with you?' Austin nodded, still staring at the ground. 'Did you experience panic attacks often?'
'Quite often. Mostly after a particularly long and stressful day where I had to deal with a lot of people. Sometimes when I was just chilling at home. After...' He paused as he glanced up at Sofia not wanting to focus too hard on those bad memories. Not just yet. 'After certain stuff happened, I was having them multiple times a day. Nothing could properly calm me down then. I just had to wait for them to pass. Sometimes it took a couple of minutes but must of them felt like they lasted hours. I don't think they did actually last that long but it sure as hell felt like it in the moment.'
'What did help you?' Sofia implored. 'What kind of coping techniques worked for you?'
'I didn't really use any specific techniques.' Austin shrugged as he began to pull at a hang nail on his thumb, stopping abruptly as a small spot of blood appeared. 'What worked for me was having someone remind me to breathe. I quite often forgot how to breathe. That or having someone tell me I was safe. The majority of the time I was anxious about getting hounded by people. I never got a moments peace when I stepped out into the big scary world outside of the small comforts at home.'
'So, you didn't feel safe?'
'Hardly ever. I know I had a bodyguard with me almost all of the time but even he couldn't stop the horde and their bloody flashing cameras and their microphones that they shoved in my face and their intrusive questions that made me want to scream. If I'm honest he was a little useless. He didn't protect me from anything.'
'Did you ever tell your parents this? That you didn't feel safe?'
Austin laughed as he shook his head in disbelief at Sofia's ignorance. 'I was a child who didn't feel safe leaving their own home. Of course I told them. I said it over and over again until I was blue in the face. It didn't help at all, if anything it made things worse.'
'How so?'
'My father took me seriously. He did his best to make things better for me but even then it wasn't good enough. The only conceivable thing he could think to do was to make the effort to be by my side to protect me so that we could avoid another paparazzi, fractured wrist incident. Obviously he couldn't be around every second of every day, something that my mother was actually glad of.' Austin sat silently for a moment before continuing. 'They fought constantly. They drove me insane with all their yelling and screaming, mainly from my mother. Her shrieks forever filled the house. She detested that he was around me all the time. Apparently it didn't look good in pictures. Wasn't good for my image. God, was she obsessed with appearances.'
'Would you say that things ever got better for you? Did the prospect of going out in public ever get easier to deal with as you got older?' 215Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqJrZLQx7My
Austin closed his eyes briefly as he let Sofia's questions sink in. The things he was revealing to her, no one else knew. They had not yet spread and been plastered all over the internet like everything else that happened in that house. It was all getting a bit much. But he knew if he stopped talking now, he may never start again. So much for Sofia not making him uncomfortable with her questions.
'In...In some ways it did but in many it didn't. My father didn't protect me anymore, I booked way more long and strenuous jobs, so I was out of the house more than I was in it most weeks. But the thing that did help, the one singular thing that made things just a little bit easier was that I grew as a person. Not only had I grown physically but I had also grown mentally. I had the courage to stand up to my mother more and protest whenever she tried to force me to do something I wasn't comfortable with. It didn't always work but hey, at least I tried. I didn't just give up and let my mother walk all over me constantly. As I got older, I began to think about... things. The future mainly. I began to think about what I wanted my future to be like. I guess that's another thing that helped keep me going. I had a clearer vision of what I wanted in life and I was willing to fight for it. Even if I had to do things alone. Luckily for me I had a few people who were willing to fight with me whenever they could. Like Charlie and my father. They knew what was best for me. Both of them tried their hardest to make life just that little bit easier for me. To be able to live happily. Or as happily as someone in my situation could be.'
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