Out of curiosity, are you intentionally writing present events in the past tense? "He'd speak with such conviction that you found it hard to breathe"
You do this a lot throughout the story, using past rather than present tense. It comes across...weird. It's very disjointed when everything is happening in such a dethatched manner.
"You'd pull your head away"
It's like you're watching yourself, rather than experiencing it for yourself. To me, at least, it defeats the purpose of a first person story. I also saw some future tense in there as well.