Hey everyone, thanks for your patience with this chapter, my work roster has changed over the last few weeks and it's thrown me out completely. I now no longer have any idea what day it is ever! I spent all today thinking it was Thursday. But thank you to all you lovely people who are still sticking with me and reading; it means a lot. Thank you also to gypsy rosalie and elizabethobrien for reviewing. Welcome aboard elizabethobrien and thank you for your kind review :)
Chapter 15
Getting better was getting harder and harder each session. Every time she stumbled out of the psychologist's office she felt as though her core had been dug out, that the world was offering her up as tribute to its children 'Here she is, she's much easier to demolish now!' There was still no discernible why to Alex's sadness, her sessions comprised mainly of crying and incomprehensible rambling and stressing. Any day now my psychologist will be pulling out the straight jacket, Alex was sure of it. But the fact that there was seemingly no clear reason behind her depression was harrowing for Alex, she was a scientist, she should be able to take her thoughts apart, see what was wrong and fix it! How on earth was the psychologist meant to help her, how was Alex meant to help herself if she didn't know why?!
There had been no horrible past, no child abuse or witnessed aggression to cause her state of mind, unlike some people who also suffered. Just knowing other people's stories made her own struggles seem weak, worthless, petty. She had grown up in a middle class household, and had never known hunger or want, people living on the street had a right to depression, she didn't! If only that line of reasoning worked. The seeming pettiness of her situation did nothing to alleviate the pain, the emptiness. She was still hollow, a vessel for tears. She still hated herself with a hate that no-one else had ever thrown her way.
Why, why, why? Alex could ask that question all day in all types of ways but there was no relief, there was no voice from heaven, no book which magically opened to her, no song which spoke to her state of mind. The cord had been severed between her and the rest of society and she was left with all of her questions and not a soul in sight to answer them. And now her soul had been stripped bare to her family, it was small comfort, but no weight had been lifted, instead it had been shifted until it pressed down on her chest, compressing her lungs. She was the overachiever of the family; she couldn't fail to get better.
The carpet scratched at Alex's skin, leaving friction burns as she crawled under her bed and wrapped her arms around herself. She knew it was childish to hide under her bed, but she didn't care. In a strange way it made it easier for her to imagine that there was nothing and no one outside of her little cave, that she was alone in the world and that nothing of monument was happening. In her cave it was just a normal day, where she didn't have to focus on anything more complex than just breathing.
Survival: that was what Alex needed to strip her existence down to. She needed to concentrate on living for a while and then she could build the rest of her life back up after that. Family, school, friends, future, they would all have to wait until she was well enough to deal with them. The truth was though, she didn't know when that would be. When would she be better? When would she be able to function like a human being again? What if the answer was never? What would she be left with then? Could she live the rest of her life working to her quirks? Would she find a strong foundation in the ruins of her psyche on which to build the rest of her life?
So many questions, and so few answers, no wonder she was going mad. The biggest doubt Alex had though, was that she would ever find the answers. That realisation left a heavy feeling in the bottom of Alex's stomach. She was mad, and she was never going to be better. How could she get better? If physical wounds never really heal then what chance would mental wounds ever have? It just made sense to Alex's analytical mind that she would be sick forevermore; that her black raven would pester her relentlessly.
At this point Alex was a prisoner in her own mind; her depression had locked the door and her anxiety had thrown away the key. She was being held at ransom for her sanity. All she needed was for a small hole at which she could chip away until she could open a door for herself. If her family really wanted to help her, they should show up with shovels and help extract her from the ruins of her life. But that was the over dramatic metaphorical sense of things, it was hard to translate that into real life action. If her family were to ask what she needed, she wouldn't know what to say. There was no obvious fix.
The psychologist appointments seemed to be helping about half the time, and making things worse the other half of the time. It was really hard to keep going to the appointments, not knowing whether she would feel better or mentally or emotionally drained at the end of the hour. But she kept going, thinking that it was part of a process. At this point it had become a routine more than anything, something she did because she had for so long rather than because she wanted to. Her whole life had become a routine, there was no longer any joy day to day, she just trudged through life, waiting for when she'd get the chance to climb into bed and sleep again. Life had finally succeeded in exhausting her.
Doesn't life just exhaust all of us sometimes! I hope you're all continuing to push through those times when you feel so worn down, and use them to motivate you to do something extraordinary. You may feel like you're a mute in a crowd of people yelling for the attention of the rest of the world; but it's the quiet ones who manage to tip the world on its head.
Until next week wishing you good mental health. :)