Nowhere

Chapter 11

Another day cleaning up mum's house, and today we're facing Dawn's bedroom. I take a deep breath before opening the door. I haven't seen this room since she died. My mum didn't move the furniture, she just boxed everything and put it in the wardrobe. The bed also has nothing on it aside from a cover protecting the mattress. It still is Dawn's room. Well... an empty shell, I suppose. It looks like her room, but it doesn't feel like her room, not anymore. Not without all her knickknacks and clothes scattered all over. Not without the smell of her perfume and makeup stains on the mirror and overdue homework on the desk.

As we go through the boxes, I find her notebooks. Dawn was obsessed with Nowhere. Nowhere, the place my mum created as a scapegoat for when she threw our broken and used toys away and somehow it became more than that to Dawn. She used to write children's short stories about lost objects and toys and their adventures through Nowhere. Her favourite childhood movie, and one of the few books she read from start to finish, was Alice in Wonderland and her stories about Nowhere were heavily inspired by it. Dawn never really liked to read, unlike me. She couldn't stay still and was always running around. The way she described Nowhere was as this magical land of infinite possibilities where the craziest adventures happened. Where everything that was lost and unwanted had finally found a home.

In her stories, the protagonist was a little girl called Robyn. Robyn had found the secret doorway to Nowhere. Life at home wasn't easy and Robyn didn't have many friends so she would hide in Nowhere and help lost toys find their place in this magical land full of broken things that still had a lot of potential left in them. These would have been great children's books. But I wonder how this story would've ended. Alice in the end leaves Wonderland. It was, after all, nothing but a dream. Would've Robyn have left Nowhere too? Would've Nowhere turned out to be a dream too? I wonder what Nowhere truly meant to Dawn. To me, it was nothing but a tale my mum told us to justify throwing our broken toys away and to make us care more about our belongings, to appreciate them more. And yet to Dawn, it was the place where she felt she belonged, this fantasy land from our childhood.

"She would've been a better writer than me."

"Different. She would've been a different type of writer. Or maybe she wouldn't even be one. She had this happy, chaotic energy about her. She would've probably been everything and anything at least once in her life."

"You're probably right." We chuckle.

We keep looking around and sorting everything into piles, and as we do, I can't help but to spiral down into a stream of dark and negative thoughts that have been haunting me all these years. I feel like I'm drowning in darkness. It's pitch black, and I can't find the surface anymore. There's no light anymore. I didn't think it would be this difficult to clear out the house.

"Rora?" Matt's voice suddenly brings me back to the surface.

"Yes?" I mutter.

"Are you okay?"

"When do you think things started to go wrong? She didn't even keep a diary, as far as I know."

"We'll never know, I guess. But there's nothing we could've done. We didn't know. I don't even know if there were signs, but even if there were, we were too young and involved in our own little worlds to notice them."

"I have a thought that has been haunting me since that day."

"What?"

"Nowhere."

"What about it?"

"Nowhere was a place for broken, lost and unloved things. I'm going to Nowhere was her suicide note. Did she feel lost, broken, and unloved? And if so, why?" Tears start dripping from Matt's face. "I'm sorry Matt."

I'm facing the harsh truth. Dawn's death affected more people than just me. I wasn't the only one. I think I resented Matt for a while. He was her best friend. How could he have not known about her mental state? Then I realised things weren't that simple. But it was selfish of me to think that I was the only one still suffering. I lost a sister, my mum lost a daughter, Matt lost his best friend...

"Don't be. I'm happy."

"Happy?"

He nods. "You are talking to me. After so long, you are opening up to me. Talking about her is painful for the both of us, but at least you are not suffering alone anymore."

I chuckle and place my arms around his neck. "You are such an idiot. How can anyone be happy in this situation?"

Matt wraps his arms around my waist, clenching his hands on my t-shirt. "I'm happy that you aren't alone this time around. That I didn't leave you alone. And that you didn't push me away."

"Well, then I guess I'm happy too."

We finish sorting the stuff in Dawn's room. I'm donating everything and I'm only keeping some photos and her notebooks. Those are the things I want to keep, the ones I want to remember her by. Her nice contagious smile and her beautiful imagination. Once everything is clean and in boxes, we move to my room.

"One would think that you became a psychologist or a neurosurgeon," Matt asks as he looks about my bookshelf. The bookshelf is full of books about genetics, neuroscience, psychology, depression, amongst other topics.

"I was trying to learn as much as I could about mental health and suicide, trying to find a medical and scientific reason. I wanted to understand it the best I could."

During my research, I learned that women are about twice more likely to become depressed than men, which is not a very reassuring thing to know. Medication can contribute to it too, as well as age, trauma, death, genes... But no matter how much I read, I couldn't understand what had made it happen for Dawn. We were too small to remember our dad, so his passing couldn't have been a major factor in it. Neither Dawn nor I were on any medication. We were healthy kids growing up, aside from the occasional cold or flu or scratches from playing, we never really had any other serious health issues. Although I did learn that hormonal contraceptives can be related to mood swings, and I wonder if maybe Dawn was on any and I didn't know about it. Since we didn't know either side of our family that well, I wondered if genes could've been the determining factor. Maybe there was some family history that we didn't know about. But there was no point in me trying to reach out and study the family tree and its medical history.

"I thought about studying medicine, become a psychiatrist or a neurologist." For a while, I did think about pushing my dreams aside and pursue something in the science field. Something that would allow me to do research. Everyone always told me I had the brains for it, so why not?

"Why did you change your mind?"

"I realised I was digging myself a hole that I wouldn't be able to crawl back from. Obsessing about it wouldn't bring her back, and my frustration kept growing the more I studied. I wasn't getting any answers and was drowning in it."

As I'm cleaning out the desk, I find an old box full of pictures. Both Matt and Dawn took pictures of us all the time, and they would always print the best ones. I kept all the pictures they gave me, but I haven't opened this box since she died. There are pictures of us at the movie theatre, at Kings, at Rosemary house, pictures of sleepovers and so many more. I can't help but to smile tenderly as I look at these. Oh! There's a cute one of me and Matt. We were having a sleepover, and he fell asleep sitting on the couch leaning against each other.

"Hey, Matt look."

"Dawn took this? When?"

"I don't know. I don't remember this one."

"There's something written on the back. 'Cutest couple ever, right?'" He smiles as he reads it. I guess even Dawn thought we made a cute couple. Am I the only one that never saw us that way? I wonder what's going through Matt's mind right now...

"Maybe we should call it a day and go back?"

"Sounds good."

Even though we're almost done, both Matt and I are exhausted. We've been doing this for two days, and it's not just the physical exhaustion is the emotional too. So, going back to Rosemary house and take a long bath and relaxing evening seems amazing to me.