Atelophobia; The fear of not being good enough

No One’s POV:
Baekhyun sat in the dining table, silently doing his revision. He
gripped his pen tightly, so hard that his hand started to shake. He
felt the anger rise up in his chest. He took a deep breath.
 

Earlier that day:
 

Baekhyun’s POV:
‘Class, for your prelim math results, top five goes to, Oh Sehun, Kris
Wu, Lee Haemin, Park Youngchae and lastly Byun Baekhyun, these five
people got the five distinctions in class” Mrs Kim proudly announced.
Applause sounded through the room as the Math scripts were being given
out.
I’m last. I’m last of the 5. Baekhyun let out a soft laugh. That’s
right Byun Baekhyun. You are last again. You are such a ing joke.
Baekhyun stared down at his math paper as he read the marks over and
over again. He looked over to Sehun’s paper. 93/100. Baekhyun then
glanced down at his own script. 81/100.

And that was not the end of Baekhyun’s misery. By the end of the day, Baekhyun had his results written down on a blue post it on his daily planner.

Geography: The last half of the class 69/100

English: Last half of the class 64/100

Mathematics: Last of top 5: 81/100

Advanced Mathematics: Last of top 5: 80/100

Current affairs: Last 7 of the class 60/100

Literature: Last of top 7: 70/100

Chemistry: Lower than recess clique 70/100

Biology: You didn’t get you top 3. 80/100

Byun Baekhyun, what ing results is this. You deproved. Of course everyone is better than you. Piece of trash.

At night:

Baekhyun continued to grip his pen, as he took deep breaths trying to calm himself down. Ever since he got his prelim results back, baek had been having difficulty suppressing his emotions. He felt the self pity, he felt the self blame. He felt the anxiety. He felt the anger. His anger at himself.

Beep beep.  Baekhyun’s phone rang. He grabbed his phone and unlocked it. Tao had sent a group message to the group.

Tao: ‘Hyungs! *-* Lets go celebrate end of prelims and all of our good results tomorrow! Crash at suho hyung’s house?”

Suho Hyung: ‘Yah, you brat, you didn’t even ask me for permission” >.<

Sehun: Okay, I’ll bring the chips. ^-^

Kyung hyung: Suho hyung, you never ever say no to crashing your house anyways, I’ll cook up some snacks then

Sehun: Yay lets watch a movie! I want to watch X men! Suho hyunnngggg ~~ rent the movie for us O-O

Tao: XMEN YES. Hyunggg pleaseeeee~~

Kris: Yah, you kids, didn’t even wait for me to choose which movie:l

Suho Hyung: Baek ah, are you there? So, can you come tomorrow?

Me: Yeah hyung, sure, I’ll bring some video games over to play too

Kyung hyung: okay then settled, crash suho hyung’s house 3 pm after school tommow ^^

End of conversation

 Baekhyun looked at his phone. His chest started to hurt again. no. In anger, he threw his phone onto his bed and tears sprang to his eyes. His breathing became heavy; all the emotions inside of him build up. Helpless, baekhyun collapsed onto the ground, as his throat constricted, obstructing his airway as he started crying. Baekhyun cried, fat droplets of tears stained his shirt, until he was choking on his sobs and gasping for oxygen. His panic attack grew worse as he started to think about how he lagged behind others, how he always ended up wallowing in self pity when he saw his classmates. How he always did worse than others. How he wasn’t good enough. How he was fat. How he was so ugly. How he didn’t deserve everything he had. Celebrate? I don’t deserve to celebrate with these ty results. Why did I even agree to go to suho hyung’s house. I don’t deserve anything good.

I’m not good enough. I hate myself.I want to ing die. Baekhyun leaned against the wall, desperately gasping for air. His lungs burned, as he coughed. By now, he wasn’t crying anymore. Baekhyun was too busy trying to just breathe. He choked once more, the images atrting to flash again.

*Crash* *Screams* the little boy crouched under the table. Traumatized by the screams and the blood. In front of him, the scene he saw every night was happening again. He felt so surreal. In just a blink of an eye, he was grabbed and dragged out from under the table by his ankles. His body shook in fear, he froze unable to do anything as the man landed blows on his small frame. “NO! Stop! Don’t do this!” A warm presence enveloped him, as the blows stopped. He felt protective arms around him. “Hyung… don’t do this!” Baekhyun suddenly screamed, as he grasped the situation. He struggled in his older brother’s arms, as he tried to break free, to prevent his hyung from protecting him.  

‘You son of a !, how dare you try to protect that piece of trash. Baekhyun, wait, I mean trash, deserves all this!” the man continued to shout at baekhyun’s hyung. Baekhyun suddenly felt the arms around him drop, the warmth disappearing.

What was that? Why did that suddenly come up? Baekhyun was dumbfounded. The image that played in his head was not the usual images that pop up during panic attacks. Who was that? Why did I call him hyung? Why was I there?  Baekhyun choked back a sob, as he fisted his shirt. Suddenly he felt tears trickle down his cheeks again. His heart hurt. His chest hurt. His stomach hurt from hunger pains. Baekhyun then sat,  thoughts filling his mind as he continued to blame himself for not being good enough. His emotions were out of control, he wanted to screm and shout so badly. When finally, he grabbed the broken plastic ruler on the table and proceeded slice open the skin on his wrist.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Continue Baek, why did you stop? Scrape. You should know what you deserve. You deserve even less. Scrape. Scrape. Why am I alive? Scrape. Why? Scrape.

Hot tears continued spilling out his eyes. Baekhyun curled up on the cold hard floor as he cried himself to sleep.