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Chapter 5

'Come on Alex, let's go!' Claire yelled from the lounge room. Alex sighed, looking down the stairs from the top landing. All it would take is one little slip and she wouldn't have to go; the thought that she might just as easily break her neck instead of an arm or a leg didn't faze her in the least. She found herself caring less and less about everything every day.

'Hey, what are you doing?' Hayley appeared behind her on the stairs, frowning as she looked at her sister.

'Oh nothing,' Alex muttered, clumping down the stairs, letting her bag bump on every single step.

'Stop dragging your feet, we're going,' Claire scolded.

'Do I really have to go?' Alex sighed. 'I have an essay to write.'

'You need to stop taking your education so seriously, have a little bit of fun for once!' Claire groaned, saying words which no parent of a teenager would ever imagine themselves saying.

'Sorry for being the one person in this family with ambition,' Alex muttered.

'Fine, since you're going to be so gloomy, you can stay home, Uncle Mitchell isn't coming either so I'll send him over to watch you.'

'I'm not a child, I don't need a babysitter.'

'It's either that or you go with us,'

'Fine.' Of all the people in the family, Uncle Mitchell was the most bearable. He'd be happy to leave her to her own devices.

'Alright, bye then,' with a quick wave the family had all piled out of the house and were gone.

'Bye.' Alex muttered to herself. It wouldn't take Uncle Mitchell long to get here, so much for having a day to herself. Alex flopped onto the couch, placing a book nearby so she could pretend to be reading when her uncle showed up. Until then she stared up at the ceiling, finding bliss in the unadulterated silence. The nagging and attention seeking behaviour of her thoughts were chaos enough without the added clamour with which her family filled the environment of their house. It was exhausting to keep all the thoughts at bay, to try and ignore them instead of letting the overwhelm her. If there was one thing she did not want, it was to become that person who suddenly shouted "Shut up" in the middle of the street; she did not want to become that person who let her sanity escape her entirely. She was strong, that could never happen to a strong person, could it? And for that matter now she thought of it, she wasn't so sure she was strong, she definitely fell more on the side of vulnerable. Things like this didn't happen to strong people, things like mental illness. She had never let those words enter her mind, mental illness, but she could no longer lie to herself; she wasn't the same person, she was sick. What should she do now?

'Alex? Your mum said you were staying home too,' Alex quickly grabbed the book, right way up of course, this wasn't some silly cliché.

'Hey Uncle Mitchell, I'm just in the lounge room,' she called back. 'It's nice not to have to shut myself in my room to get peace and quiet.'

'I feel your pain, with Cam in the house there is no such place for me,' Mitchell rolled his eyes as he sat down on the other couch.

'I can imagine,' Alex sympathised wryly, a small smirk on her face. 'Is that why you stayed home?'

'Well that and being a redhead my skin just loves the sun.' Uncle Mitchell's voice returned to its normal state: sarcasm.

'Right.'

'But I'm glad we get to spend the day together, you're the one person in the family most like me, and we really don't get the chance to hang out much.'

'Yeah, well I'm always studying,' Alex admitted.

'And I'm always working; we're such nerds.' Alex chuckled at this, somehow Uncle Mitchell saying it took the sting out of the words, like they were taking back the word and saying "Well is it really such a bad thing after all?" There was something empowering about the word when it wasn't said with harsh meaning, the tone implying it as a compliment rather than an insult. She was smiling, but all too soon her facial muscles froze and she found herself struggling as the negative thoughts crept back in. Perhaps the reason she and Uncle Mitchell never caught up was because he really didn't like her after all, perhaps he had groaned when her mum spoke to him on the phone about watching her, perhaps he didn't want to be here as much as she didn't want him here.

'What's going on, Alex?' His voice startled her out of her paranoid thoughts. She looked up to see him frowning at her, studying her face closely.

'Nothing, just tired from all the studying,' Alex deflected.

'I'm family; you can speak to me about anything,'

'No, I really can't,' Alex remembered all the horrible things she had thought about her family. They were things she shouldn't be thinking, and she wasn't even sure why they had crossed her mind in the first place. Was she really such a horrible person?

'You know, in high school, before I came out I went through this time where I was angry at everyone, and sad, and I couldn't be bothered to get out of bed most mornings,' Mitchell said.

'I'm not a lesbian if that's what you mean?' She frowned, more because her uncle was so far out of the ballpark than because she was truly offended by the fact he had thought she was gay.

'No, what I'm trying to say is, I've felt exactly what you're feeling and I know it's hard to talk about it to normal people, but to be able to talk about it to someone who has been there is such a relief.' A silence hung in the air while Alex processed this, how exactly did he know what she was going through? 'You can talk to me, Alex, there is nothing you can say which will even slightly shock me, trust me I've thought much worse!' The air was heavy with Mitchell's anticipation, and buzzing with Alex's unsaid thoughts as she struggled to find the words.

'I feel as if I don't know myself anymore, my thoughts, my personality, they're not me, they're this monster which has taken over my mind.' The words tumbled over each other as they fell out of her mouth. 'I just find myself hating everything, but then at other times I'm so indifferent to everything, either way there is no joy.'

'Go on,' Uncle Mitchell nodded. Alex looked down at her hands, picking at her nails as she spoke.

'I feel like there's a great sadness inside me, like I am the sadness so intertwined is it with my being. Any time I smile or laugh, it's not because I'm particularly enjoying a situation, it's the mask I've constructed; I've learnt by heart all of the appropriate responses and I'm playing them out like some sick pantomime.' Alex looked up at Mitchell, eyes brimming with pain. 'It makes me wonder if I'll ever be happy again. I don't even know what it is that is making me so desperately unhappy in the first place so how can I even begin to heal?'

'You've got to at least try, sometimes it's along the way that you find the answer to all of these questions, and trust me there are so many questions!'

'Why do I feel like this? I haven't been through any huge trauma's, I haven't experienced anything important enough to feel so much pain and so much numbness. Why am I so sad, when I'm better off than so many other people?'

'That's the thing about mental illness, there's no rhyme or reason, just a cruel, unrelenting disease.' Mitchell sighed.

'It's just so hard going through this when everyone else gets to be normal. And I can't tell any of them about it because they're so normal; they can nod and make sympathetic noises, but they'll never understand in the least. They'll never understand the barren wasteland you're dumped into when your mind deserts you without so much as a compass or map, or even water. You're all alone, with only negative thoughts to keep you company.'

'Maybe they'll never understand, but to make both your and their lives easier you need to try and explain, we need to break the taboo surrounding mental illness and help other people to learn your moods so that they can know when it's okay to comfort you and when it's best to leave you alone.'

'But the truth is I don't even know why I'm sad,' Alex sighed. 'How can I explain when they'll want to know why? I can't lock down a specific cause, all I know is that for a long time I've been feeling sad, and that recently it's been joined by a feeling of hopelessness. I feel as if the world is going to end tomorrow and no one can see it but me.'

'I guess for you the world has ended, at least your world has,'

'I just feel as if there's something missing, something that everyone else has but for some reason I don't and it's that missing piece which is making me so miserable.' Alex sighed.

'Have you tried to talk to your parents about this?'

'No, they'd never understand,' Alex looked down at her hands. 'You know mum, she'd just freak out and take it personally, and Dad, he'd just care too much. I don't know why anyone would care though, who am I in the grand scheme of things? What does it matter how I feel or even if I die tomorrow? There will be no page in a history book dedicated to me, I will have lived and died without leaving a trace, as not so much as a blip on the radar of the earth.

'It would matter to us, we're your family, and you are much, much more than a blip on a radar to us. You're a brilliant girl, and while you may not have accomplished much of worth yet, I am certain you will, you can't put the future scientific advancements you might make in jeopardy just because you're struggling.' Mitchell was staring intensely at her, willing her to see his point. 'Everyone goes through something at one point or another, but they don't let it dictate who they are. Yes this is hard right now, yes recovery is going to be a long process and yes it will be painful to think about for many years to come, yes it's suffocating how sad you feel right now, but it all changes, you just have to be so desperate for life that you pull yourself up out of this dark pit and you crawl every single inch of the way until you've left the darkness way behind.' Alex gulped as she looked at her uncle's quivering lip, the fire in his eyes. It hadn't been easy for him to recover, and it had probably been even harder for him to talk to her about it.

'Okay,' Alex picked up her book, exhausted by the conversation and needing to consider all that had been said.

so yay some more dialgoue, some more action, it is a fic about depression so at times it will just be a lot of Alex's thoughts, sorry but depression isn't exactly an exciting action packed thing. Alright well as always reviews make me very happy, I like to hear any thoughts on the fic :)

Until next Friday, happy thoughts and lots of reviews :)