Group Therapy

Author's Note

Hey everyone, this won't take long but it's important so please hang on.

So l know many of you are probably sick of how most of the chapters in Laynie's POV are depressing and all she does is cry while in other chapters she laughs and isn't sad at all so I'm just here to clear something.

As Alex mentioned in chapter 16 Laynie has undiagnosed depression and as you may know, depression isn't just sadness.
A lot of writers say that their character has depression but we rarely ever see the character showing signs of it.

Somedays Laynie gets up like it's nothing and other days it seems almost impossible to get out of bed, most days she feels down and all of her thoughts are mostly negative while other days she laughs around with Alex and the others because that's what depression is like, it's not all or nothing.
You don't have to be feeling depressed 24/7 to actually have depression, because like any other thing in the universe it has it's good days, even if it's mostly bad days.

Another thing that authors who claim their character has depression never mention, mostly when they write about their characters negative thoughts or behaviours they do so when it's night time for their characters, while it is true that most of the negative thoughts happen at night time what they don't mention is that it could still happen in the middle of the day mid-laugh with your best friends you can feel a wave of sadness punch you in the gut for absolutely no reason, that's just what depression is.

One last thing before you go on, I know I've mentioned Laynie feeling numb yet still crying, I want you to keep in mind that you can still experience strong emotions without actually feeling them which is the case with Laynie.

And by not saying anything about how self harm is bad and dangerous at the end of chapter 38 when Laynie reveals that she cuts herself doesn't mean I'm promoting it, I simply don't have anything to say.

I'm pretty sure everyone who does it knows the dangers of it and how there are better ways and blah blah blah so I thought lecturing you about something that I myself have done doesn't seem quite right so I chose to stay silent.
I'm aware that it isn't the right choice but I don't know any better, after all if you didn't already know I'm twelve years old so I don't really have much to say about it.

Thank you to those who made it this far, see you guys in the next chapter xx