A World of Their Own

Author's Note

This series of short stories, all of which are between 1,500 and 2,500 words long, was written as both a challenge to myself and to complete the Middle Years Programme Personal Project.

Each main character in each of the short stories has a mental illness, which I tried to show through the way they act, think, and interact with the other characters around them. The point of this book was to write about five different and separate protagonists, each with a different mental illness and their own short stories, and show the symptoms of each mental illness, give some insight into what a child or teenager with that mental illness might be thinking as they go through their daily lives, and show some of the internal and external struggles that they might face from day to day. Royce is meant to represent depression, Jaiden is supposed to represent schizophrenia, Gwyneth is meant to have schizophrenia, Bailey is supposed to have anorexia, and Nathaniel is supposed to represent generalized anxiety.

As you can most likely tell, the settings that each of the protagonists are placed in are in an alternate world that is slightly different from reality. They all take place within the same world, but they are very far removed from each other, which is meant to represent the isolation that some real-world mentally ill children go through.

Some of the situations that the protagonists of these stories are in are very unrealistic in today's modern world. I did this on purpose in order to be able to better implement the points I wanted to make about how a mentally ill child could think and act. In fact, the reason I made the characters who they are – for example, Royce is a young prince, Jaiden is the son of two parents who are physically unable to care for their children, Gwyneth was born into a strict, rich family, Bailey has extremely talented and perfectionist family members, and Nathaniel lives in a small town with somewhat paranoid parents – is so that I could have more creative freedom, it created an environment in which I could better attempt to illustrate the illnesses the protagonists had without stating it outright, and so that I wouldn't get bored while writing this. My own mind tends to lean more towards fantasy than reality, and in my opinion, it would have been more boring to both write and read a series of realistic short stories about mental illnesses, even though it might have gotten my overall message across better.

After reading these short stories, I hope you, as the reader, have come to realize something new about the problem of mental illnesses and that something needs to be done to help mentally ill children cope with their illnesses. Often, they fight their battles alone, without reaching out to others for help. In addition, many people do not take the issue seriously, which leads to further problems for children who are mentally ill. They believe that these illnesses are not real; mentally ill children may also be made fun of or isolated among their peers for something that they cannot help.

Mental illnesses truly are a serious issue, and the effects they leave on people can last for a lifetime. Each one is unique; they each have their own causes, symptoms, and effects on each individual person. Even if it is in a small way, I hope that after reading this, you, the reader, will show a gesture of kindness to help a person struggling with a mental illness, whether it be depression, or anxiety, or an eating disorder, and treat the issue of mental illnesses more seriously and with more respect for the people who have and are suffering because of these mental illnesses. One small gesture of kindness can go a long way to bring about change in the people and the world around us.