Breaking Hope (Finding Sky edit)

Chapter 13

Later that same night, I sat on my bed cross legged, holding my small journal. At my second to last appointment at my therapist in England, they advised me to keep a journal. Not like a "dear diary" journal, no, but more like a way to write down anything weird that has happened. By doing this, it would get it off my chest and reduce my anxiety. Of course, I wouldn't tell anyone anything that has happened this week. I can barely tell myself without wanting to laugh at how stupid I sound. The therapist has told me if I didn't want to tell anyone, that's fine and to jot it down. Any form would get it out, and therefore get it off my chest, reliving the anxiety. It was up to me to which way I would prefer to jot it down. That's what I loved about my UK therapist – she was quite young, maybe only twenty four. She specialised in childhood trauma in relation to primary mental health prevention. But the main thing that made her different was the way she treated issues. Many psychologists haven't undergone the illnesses they dedicate their life to prevent, but mine did. My psychologist had adolescent depression and anxiety, and therefore understood what I was saying. Even though I was "discharged due to move" a few months ago, she added me on Facebook to make sure I was okay. She recommended this, not to keep an eye on me but because she knew that I would get anxious if something odd happened. Of course, by odd she meant if I got bullied, or if I felt like I stuck out. She didn't mean hear telepathic messages from a man wearing a black trench coat who randomly appeared, or hear the telepathic messages from the cute boy in your year and she definitely didn't mean a random flying piece of paper that signed itself based on my mental choices. The journal was a way of me writing down this weird bullshit, and then destroying it by any mean I like. Normally, I use to write pages upon pages on my worst days, and take it into the shower. I use to wet the shower cubicle wall, stick the pages up and then watch as I showered as the words turned back into ink, dripping down the sheets, and then the paper turn to mere pulp. It was strangely therapeutic. Other times, I used pins to make patterns in the paper. Or I just use to rip it up and throw it out the window, the paper pieces blowing away in the wind and covering the streets of London. The book I chose to destroy was one I brought from Paper chase, a stationary shop. The black fabric hardback book was binded together with rings, allowing me just to rip the sheets by the dotted edges.

I picked up a pen, and opened the journal looking at all the pieces of paper left in the spine from when I ripped them out. I flinched, knowing each one was caused by a distressing memory, but couldn't think too much about it. I had let them go – and I needed to let these events go as well. I scribbled the events of everything that had happened in chronological order in as much detail as I could muster. I wrote about meeting Nate outside school by mistake, grasping that letter in my hand. I wrote about walking back home, when that voice started speaking to me, and it felt like thousands of razor blades were thrown at my house. Next, about waking up feeling a bit better at Ella's, before she dropped me off home when Maria demanded me home. I then wrote about the letter, floating in my bedroom when I researched the water school, and the way it felt in my mind and the way it made me feel – incapable, but capable of bigger things. Then the man who appeared tonight, who claimed to be the voice. By the time I finished writing down everything on my notepad, before ripping out the pages. I held them in my hand, looking at my handwriting. When I was rushing to write this down, getting into the flow of writing and letting my hand write what was happening compared to over thinking about it my handwriting turns near enough illegible and cursive. What to do to get rid of these pages? I mean, I felt more relaxed now then I have in the last few days, but it wasn't enough. I needed to destroy these notes. Slowly, I started to rip the pages up. The tear felt satisfying, and with each tear I felt a weight being lifted off my chest, but I couldn't help but feel nothing like this would have happened in London. A few seconds later, the three sheets were ripped up into nothing more than lined confetti, the words I had once wrote nothing more than trigrams on each sheet. Slowly, looking at the shreds, I walked over to the window, opening the vent. Standing on my desk, I gently let go of the sheets out the window, watching each blow away with the cold breeze into the night.