Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and put a trigger warning on this chapter. It's going to be dealing with some pretty heavy stuff so please if you deal with severe depression please don't read on, it may be triggering for you.
Chapter 25
Alex stared unseeingly out of the window. What is the point of all this? We go to school, we get jobs, we fall in love, have families, and then what, we die? Everything is ripped away from us and the world falls to pieces? What is the point of anything? What is there that makes me want to get out of bed in the mornings and expose myself to all this
craziness? The truth was, Alex's mind drew a blank. There was absolutely nothing that she was passionate about to the point that she would brave the complexities of society.
What has happened? I used to have a goal, I would work hard and get into a good university and become the top of my field. But now... She sighed. Now she didn't feel as driven by that. She still appreciated the intellectual stimulation that it afforded her, but she was no longer in competition with everyone. What was the point in being the smartest at anything if she had no control over her psyche? When she felt like her whole world was fishtailing wildly and she was trying to grab hold of the wheel again before it crashed into truck and went up in a spectacular show complete with flames and flying body parts.
It was no longer enough to sit back and hope she got through this. She had to act and find something to be passionate about, something to motivate her enough to take the step and reclaim her life back from the depression. But how? She could barely speak its name. At night she hid under the covers from it, and daren't let her foot skim the floor in case it pulled her under the bed and devoured her whole.
She was trapped. Her mind was a prison, and depression her jailor. It held the key in front of her, taunting her. And when she crawled forwards on broken limbs, daring to hope she could finally snatch her freedom, it was yanked back, her jailor's lips stretching into a gaping laugh that swallowed the remnants of her sanity.
'Ahem,' a cough sounded quite close to Alex, and she was dragged from her thoughts, and slammed back into reality. Reality stood over her, tapping her feet and glaring down at her through her spectacles. 'Nice of you to join us back here on planet earth, Alex.' Her teacher continued to look down at her. 'Perhaps now you could answer my question, if we're not boring you too much.' Alex looked at the equation that her teacher was pointing to in the textbook. For once, though, these numbers which had always made so much sense to her were swimming in front of her vision, jumbling and unjumbling, taunting her as they refusing to relinquish their meaning.
'See, if you had been paying attention, this would all be so easy,' her teacher brought home the point.
'No,' Alex surprised even herself by jumping to her feet. Her teacher gaped at her, unsure what was happening. 'I will not pay attention because you are not paying attention to me. I am just another batch of students to be filled with the same knowledge and put through the same paces as everyone else who comes through this place. You have no idea of my hopes or dreams, of my struggles, or sacrifices.'
'Well, I'm just here to teach maths,' her teacher frowned, dumbfounded at being spoken to like this.
'Well there are some things that are more important than maths!' Alex shoved her textbook deep into her bag and stormed from the room, leaving a silent classroom behind.
Oh, you did not handle that well, Alex fretted, massaging her temples with her hands. They will be whispering about your mental breakdown for years!
'You know what, let them talk!' Alex said aloud, drawing looks from passersby. 'I'm done with trying to please people who don't care in the least for me.'
'Too right honey!' An old lady sitting at a bus stop cheered her on as she stomped by. Alex looked around in confusion, and flashed her a quick smile before continuing on her walk.
It's not unfair of me to demand that the world pay attention to me, I am not a nobody, I am a person and I feel things just as every other person on this planet does, and I want the same comfort that everyone else expects...I just have no one to give it to me. Alex's face crumpled. I have no one there for me because I pushed everyone else away, I did this. It is no one's fault but my own. I can blame the world all l want, but I can't expect my loved ones to be mind readers; if I keep pushing them away of course they're going to give them my space. By not letting them love me I am not loving them. And then I have the audacity to hate them and feel sorry for myself because they don't care enough to notice. They do care; I'm just not letting them notice.
Alex's feet were carrying her mindlessly through the town. Not once did she think that she had just walked out of school, where once that would've bothered her. The thoughts kept on coming, thick and fast as she walked. The floodgates were opened and she began to see a whole range of new perspectives she had never seen before. She knew that she was so desperately unhappy with her life, and that she was the only one who could change it. She also knew what a monumental task that would be. She had been trying now for ten months to beat the depression and at this stage she didn't feel as if she were gaining any ground at all.
The air felt lighter, she sat on a rock and for the first time looked around, seeing where her feet had taken her while she was lost in thought. At first her surroundings were foreign, all leaves, and trees, with no buildings to identify her location. Suddenly though she recognised the place, it was where her mother and Gloria had taken the many and her siblings one Mothers' Day. She remembered her mum saying that it was easier to think in nature; that it was easy to forget life, civilisation, and the commitments that they both demanded when you couldn't hear the world outside this park. As she listened to the birds chirping and the sound of a stream trickling a little ways off she could see why her mother liked hiking. There was a certain serenity that she was sure wasn't available in a house with three teenagers and an infantile husband.
The tightness in her chest loosened, and Alex felt her breath come more naturally. It felt a little bit easier to deal with when she wasn't having to deal with the assaults of the outside world. Maybe Hamlet was right; at what point do we stop just putting up with all that life throws at us and take action? She got to her feet, wandering up the path. She wanted to see the city from afar, to see her tormentor from a safe distance. There were no murders, no incest, no plotting here, so why was she so depressed? How could she reconcile the way she was feeling with the little she had to endure. People lost limbs, loved ones, and still managed to go on about their life without shouting at teachers or taking spontaneous trips out to the wilderness.
Alex rounded the corner and saw her home town laid out before her, looking innocently picturesque, how dare it!
'You're not fooling anyone!' she yelled as she approached it. 'You are cruel and I refuse to let you win!' The city was silent, Alex wasn't sure what she was expecting; it's not as if a city talks. It wasn't as if the whole town was going to crumble to ashes in the face of her pain and anger.
Defeated, she sunk to the ground, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her hands flopped over her head and she let her chest shudder. Everything just hurt. It hurt to breathe, to think, to keep on existing.
She flicked a rock over the ledge, and leant forward, watching it succumb to gravity, disappearing into the rocky outcrops below. It had to be at least twenty metres down. She dropped another rock, watching it fall, and again, and again. She imagined that the rock was her body; that it fell and disappeared from view. At this height it would be instantaneous, painless. She peered over the edge, wiping the tears from her face.
... I'm not sure what to say. I'm not sure what I can say.
I've left it on a literal cliff hanger, perhaps this would be a good place for me to say that reviews would help me speed up the writing process for the next chapter... or I could just end it here... it's up to you. I wouldn't call it extorting reviews...simply asking for inspiration :P
But in all seriousness, this chapter was very difficult for me to write. I have suffered from depression for a lot of my life, and even though I'm in recovery it likes to remind me that it's still there, waiting. We don't just get magically better one day, and in the time that we suffer we are pushed to our breaking points. I am not simply writing this story for entertainment purposes, this is self medicinal, and a way of reaching out to people; my little way of saying "You're not alone" We're all in this together, we're all on this planet, making each other miserable but we can choose to turn that misery around. I have suffered a lot during my battles with mental illness, but if just one person reads this and understands what a friend or family member who is suffering is going through or realises that they're not alone in feeling this way then my suffering will not have been in vain.
please let me know what you think and favourite/follow so you can see the next chapter as soon as it's up.
If you find this chapter hitting close to home, I would recommend you seek medical advice, depression is a serious thing and your first priority should be your mental health.