Another Friday, another installment :) I hope your week has been good so far, and I hope you're as excited as I am to see what happens next. First quick thankyous to gypsy rosalie and squirmyphish/momadance420 for the reviews, I always appreciate feedback :)
Chapter 6
Wow I can't believe Uncle Mitchell has been through the same stuff as me, Alex shook her head for the third time that day. They had spent their whole day together swapping stories and Uncle Mitchell had told her about things that had worked for him so that he could start getting better. Even though it wasn't the blissful day of silence she had originally planned, it was still nice, and almost therapeutic in a way. To be able to get it all off her chest, and blabber and not make sense with someone who had been there; there were just no words to describe what a relief that had been. The way she felt today, dare she say it, she felt like there was hope that she might one day be able to drag herself out of this black hole. Even two days since her family had come home she felt as if she were strong enough to deal with them better, to actually pay attention to their conversation even if she was still unable to interact with them.
She had to capitalise on this newfound ray of hope; before she slumped back into her feeling of worthlessness she should...what exactly? Uncle Mitchell had promised to make weekly appointments for lunch so they could hang out and chat, but he was so busy, Alex doubted that he would be able to keep such a promise. With a sigh Alex fell back against her pillows. So what else to do? Who could she reach out to, what could she do to help herself? Perhaps she should start seeing a counsellor, but she doubted that she would be able to talk to a stranger about her problems if she couldn't talk to her loved ones. Maybe that would make it easier, the counsellor wouldn't know me, wouldn't take my feelings as a personal assault; there would be no worry of them repeating anything, maybe. Alex considered it; she would have to act soon before she sunk back into her pit of despair and no longer saw the point in anything. To experience a rare moment of clarity was wonderful, but she couldn't squander such a gift.
Could she see the counsellor without alerting her parents though? She would have to explain the time spent away and then there was the matter of money, it wouldn't be cheap. Alex knew she would have to open up to her parents eventually, but first she had to learn how to discuss what was going on, how to express her opinions again. Right now she felt incapable of holophrasis, the words she had once treasured retreated from her tongue, hugging themselves in dark corners. The way in which she felt was a complex thing and someone one had yet to create the vocabulary to explain the dark blanket pressing down inside her skull, suffocating her mind. If words had failed writers like Sylvia Plath to explain why she felt the way she felt, what hope did Alex have?
Her clarity, her rare flash of light cutting through the suffocating darkness was ebbing away. She was just so lost, and people around her had the ability to reach out a hand, to bring her back to safety, but they had yet to realise she was missing. The person who ate breakfast with them every morning was not her, it was the robot, her autopilot that they were seeing, who made the correct amount of comments as were expected before motoring through her breakfast so she could escape again. Dropping the act though, that was sure to send her parents into full panic mode, dropping the act would mean showing an overwhelming range of raw emotions which would see her mother admitting her to a special hospital. Alex couldn't do that, she wanted to get help, but she wanted it to be on her terms. Admitting her problem to her parents would cause them to jump in and take over, she would simply go back to being treated like a child and plodding along through life. No, to truly recover she had to want to recover, to need to recover; no matter how bad she got, how disillusioned with the process she had to remember just how desperately she was clinging to her sanity, how she needed to get better, for her. Her parents knowing would put pressure on her to get better simply because they expected her to already be better.
Alex crossed the room to her desk and sat down in front of her computer, fingers pausing mid hover over the keyboard. It's time, she typed in a search for counsellors in her area, clicking through a few pages before she settled on one, I will get better!
Whatever will happen next? Please leave me some reviews, a happy writer is a creative writer :)
Until next week au revoir my dear readers :)