MidReal Story
Solace in His Arms: A Love's Resilience
Scenario: I want my boyfriend to comfort me.
Create my version of this story
Jack Thompson
boyfriend, in a relationship with Emily, tall with messy black hair, caring and protective.
Sarah Jennings
mutual friend of Emily and Jack, supportive of their relationship, short blonde hair, outgoing and empathetic.
Emily Carter
girlfriend, in a relationship with Jack, slender with long brown hair, anxious but affectionate.
I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out.
I’m sitting at my desk, staring at my computer screen, but I can’t focus on the words.
They’re all blurry and swimming in front of me, and I can’t make sense of them.
I’ve read the same paragraph at least ten times now, but I still don’t know what it says.
My heart is pounding so hard in my chest that it feels like it’s going to explode, and I’m finding it hard to breathe.
I know what’s happening—I’m having a panic attack.
But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.
I take a deep breath and try to calm myself down, but it’s no use.
The harder I try to control my breathing, the more panicked I become.
I need to get out of here before someone notices that something’s wrong with me.
I need to get out of here before she comes back.
I don’t even make it past the elevator before I have to stop.
My legs are shaking and I don’t know if they’re going to support me for much longer.
I lean against the wall and try to take deep breaths, but it’s no use.
I’m still gasping for air and my heart is still beating wildly in my chest.
I close my eyes and try to focus on something—anything—to distract myself.
But it’s no use.
I can feel the dread pooling in my stomach, threatening to overtake me at any moment.
I need someone to help me.
But there’s no one here.
I’m all alone.
And that makes everything worse.
The tears are pooling in my eyes, blurring my vision even more, but I do my best to blink them back.
I can’t break down here, in the middle of the hallways where anyone could see me.
But I don’t know how much longer I can hold on for.
I need help.
I try to take a deep breath, but it turns into a sob in the back of my throat.
I need—my phone—I need—
The panic is rising up inside of me again, and I can feel it threatening to push me over the edge.
I need something to help me calm down before it’s too late, before I do something that I regret.
My hand is shaking so badly that I can barely hold on to my phone, but I manage to pull it out of my bag and unlock the screen with trembling fingers.
I need Jack right now more than anything else in the world.
Just hearing his voice will help me calm down enough to get through the rest of the day.
My thumb hovers over his name in my contacts, but then I pull away at the last second.
If someone sees me calling him, they’ll ask questions that I don’t want to answer right now.
But then I remember something that Jack told me when we first started dating.
He told me that if I ever needed him, all I had to do was call him up and leave the phone next to me while he drove over.
He said that he could always tell when I was having a bad day—even through a phone call—and that he would drop everything to come be with me if he needed it.
And right now, more than anything else in the world, I need him here with me.
I pull up his number on my phone again and press call as quickly as possible so that there’s no way that I can change my mind this time.
The phone rings once…twice…three times…and then Jack picks up.
“Hey Em,” he says.
“Just listen to your boyfrend for a while, okay?”
“You know how much you like listening to my voice.”
He doesn’t sound worried or concerned, even though he knows that there has to be a reason for me calling him in the middle of a workday like this.
I’m having a bad day.
A really bad day.
And I really need to hear his voice right now.
“Talk to me,” he prompts when I don’t say anything.
I can hear the concern in his voice now that we’re talking—but it’s not enough to help calm down the panic attack that I can feel building up inside of me.
I’m shaking so badly now that I don’t think that I can hold the phone anymore.
“I need you to talk to me,” I whisper.
“I’m having a bad day.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Silence stretches between us as I try to catch my breath and calm down.
I can feel my heart slowing down a little bit, but not enough for my liking.
I need to get out of here before she comes back.
But I don’t think that I can move right now.
“I don’t want you to call me while you’re at work unless you’re in trouble with your boss,” Jack says after a long pause.
His voice is soft and gentle—and it sounds so much closer than it did before.
I think he’s getting up from his desk right now so that he can go somewhere more private to talk to me.
I shake my head, even though I know that he can’t see me.
I’m not in trouble with my boss.
I’m in trouble with myself.”
“You’re having an anxiety attack.”
Jack knows me so well that he can tell what’s wrong with me just by the sound of my voice.
My eyes are burning with unshed tears, but I know that if I start crying right now then I won’t be able to stop.
And I don’t want him to see me like this—not when I’m like this.
Jack sighs and falls silent for a moment as he thinks about what to say next.
He’s trying to figure out the best way to help me calm down—and I don’t know how I got so lucky to have him in my life.
“You should have told me that you were having a bad day right from the start,” Jack says eventually.
“Then I could have come over and helped you work through it before things got this bad.”
“I’m sorry,” I say as the tears start falling down my cheeks and my voice breaks on the last word.
“I just…It was just one of those days, you know?”
“Yeah,” he agrees.
“I know what you mean.”
I take a deep breath and try to calm myself down before I end up hyperventilating again.
Jack doesn’t say anything—he’s waiting for me to talk first—so I take another deep breath and then let it out as slowly as I can.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I say eventually when I can finally trust my voice again.
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
“Like what?”
“Like this,” I repeat with a sob.
“Like I’m falling apart at the seams and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.”
I pause for a moment and take another deep breath before plowing forward.
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore,” I repeat again.
I don’t want my hand to shake when I pick up the phone to call him and I don’t want my heart to race when he’s not here with me.”
“You don’t want to have a freak-out anymore,” Jack says softly after a moment’s pause.
小样怎的
“Yeah,” I agree with a sniffle.
“You don’t have to worry about that for much longer.”
“What do you mean?”
Jack sighs and falls silent again while he thinks of the best way to tell me what he has planned for us—but I already know that whatever he says next is going to make me feel better.
You’ve made me feel better already just by calling me like this,” he says after a moment’s pause.
“But I mean…you won’t ever have to worry about feeling like this ever again because we won’t be doing this much longer.”
“What do you mean?”
I repeat with a frown as my brain struggles to process his words through the fog of my anxiety attack.
Jack sighs again and falls silent for a moment while he thinks about how to explain things better—but I still don’t understand the words that come out of his mouth next, even though they do make me feel better.
“I was going to wait until you came home to tell you this, but it’s Sarah that’s been making your life so difficult lately,” Jack explains gently.
“She’s been telling everyone in the office that we used to go out together and now you’re obsessed with me again because of some deadline that you missed and now she’s trying to punish you for it.”
I gasp and start crying again as Jack says her name—because Sarah is my former best friend and she should be on my side right now, not trying to make my life so difficult that I want to quit my job and move away from all of this forever instead.
“You’ve been talking to her again,” Jack says with a sigh when he hears me crying on the other end of the line.
“Why would you do that to yourself, Em?”
I don’t know why,” I sob after a moment’s pause as my brain struggles to process his words through my anxiety attack and try to figure out what he’s saying about Sarah and me going out together.
I’m just so scared that people will find out about us—and she’s so nice to me when we’re alone that I keep on forgetting that she’s trying to sabotage my career when other people are around to see her doing it.”
Jack groans in frustration after he hears my answer and I know that he wants to say something snide about my former best friend—but he knows that it will only make me feel worse if he does right now.
“I’m coming to get you,” he says eventually once he’s managed to calm down enough to speak again.
“Where are you right now?”
“I’m still in my office,” I admit when I finally manage to stop sobbing and wipe away my tears with a tissue from my desk drawer.
“It’s okay,” Jack says with a sigh after a moment’s pause as he realizes that I’m waiting for him to come and rescue me from our office building again—just like he does whenever this happens to me at work.
