"I don't wanna do this anymore, it's so surreal

I can't survive if this is all that's real…"

-Lana del Rey, 'High by the Beach'

A/N: sorry if Naomi's thoughts don't make much sense in this chapter. I have based her feelings on my own experiences with depression. Also, sorry that it's short and I haven't updated for a long time. I will try to update this more often now.

Chapter Seven

"Robert, what the hell are you doing?"

After a stressful day (well, half-day) at school followed by a huge binge, all I wanted to do was sleep, but I was kept awake by the sound of my mother yelling into the telephone. My dad still wasn't home, and she wasn't happy about it.

"You're with her again, aren't you?"

Rolling into a ball and pulling the quilt over my ears, I tried to escape the sounds of the same old argument. For years I had heard them having this conversation, over the phone or face to face, about several different women. Work colleagues, a waitress, even a teacher from my elementary school. I didn't know who they were referring to now.

"Bullshit! You can't hide this from me anymore. Who do you care about more – your family, or another goddamn floozie who's dumb enough to believe your lies? Naomi's your daughter too, in case you'd forgotten."

The yelling stopped and I realised that my dad had probably hung up. I was shocked; my mom rarely cursed, even when she was angry. Hearing footsteps on the stairs I hastily unfurled from my cowering position, ready to face my mom if she came into my bedroom; I was surprised to hear her passing by my bedroom and slamming the door to her own. Weak with relief, I curled into a foetal position and began to sob as quietly as I could. Surely they wouldn't stay together much longer – this was his sixth affair. Then I'd have to choose who to live with. If only I could live on my own… neither of them cared much about me anyway. I was just a bargaining chip when they wanted to hurt each other. "You're making Naomi upset", "Don't you care about Naomi?", "I just want what's best for Naomi."

Perhaps it was the stress, or the overwhelming amount of food I'd just ingested, but my thoughts were racing in a way I'd never experienced. Lia tried to force her way past the rushing stream of disconnected words flooding my consciousness, but in my head I yelled at her to leave me alone! As I fought to slow my breathing, rocking back and forth to settle myself, the rapid tide of my thoughts slowly receded. In their wake they left nothing but a hollow feeling of deep sadness. I gasped at the intensity of this black hole of sorrow and the disturbing thoughts that followed it.

What's the point? Has there ever even been a point to this madness that we call life? We're all just helpless creatures, screaming into the dark, clinging to anything that might mean something. But nothing means anything. We jump through hoops, smile and wave and nod, go to school and work and church, in the hope that all of this might actually matter. We lie to ourselves, desperately trying to believe that this isn't all there is. We obsess over the ideas of God and heaven and hell and something, ANYTHING, other than the randomness and ambiguity of life. We live, we die, and then there's nothing else – but how the hell are we supposed to survive knowing that that's all there is?

Shaking, my hand clamped over my mouth to muffle my uncontrollable sobbing, I tumbled into the abyss of a deep depressive episode. (Of course, at the time I didn't know the proper words for it – I just thought I'd gone crazy, and it terrified me.) I was no longer crying for myself, crying because of the nasty teacher and the mean girls at school who'd treated poor little Naomi so unfairly – I was crying for the whole of humanity. Crying because the whole world had gone to shit and it was nobody's fault but our own. Crying because I was just beginning to understand the futility of it all. Crying because –

The sound of my mother's footsteps seemed to cut through the air like bullets, jolting me upright. Startled, I wiped my eyes and gained control over my emotions as she peered through a crack in the door. I glared back at her defiantly and tried not to look too shocked by the two suitcases she was dragging behind her, no doubt filled with my dad's belongings. So, she was finally kicking him out for good.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

Thanks for all your support, Mom. Her footsteps receded and I soon heard the car revving and driving away. I was alone.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had begun banging my wrist on the frame of my bed. The feeling of a bruise gradually forming on my arm was painful, but for a while it seemed to fill the horrible emptiness that I felt. Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming of nothing. Only blackness.