I blinked hard several times, my eyes feeling as dry as sandpaper as I recoiled in disgust from the bright blue light from my laptop screen that was still lying on my knees from my message last night. Shit. What time is it? 2pm. Why did no one wake me up? Maybe they'd given up on trying to drag me away from sleep, considering the fact that it had never been hugely successful in the past. Could I blame them? No, not really. But this did mean that my mistake blog post had been up and live on the internet for a grand total of... thirteen hours. Wonderful. I didn't even want to look at the statistics. What would it matter if somebody found one random blog post on the internet? There was no way of linking it back to me and therefore there was no point in taking it down.

The kitchen was eerily quiet as I sat alone at the table, watching the cheerios that I knew would not get eaten turn into some sort of grainy stew. Having been forced to drop out of full time education, I was entirely used to spending empty days by myself in empty rooms in empty houses however something felt a little off. I poured the mush that remained in my bowl down the sink before hastily pulling some old shoes on and running out of the house, slamming the door shut behind me. The air outside was more still, or at least as still as you can get in a London borough and I felt a small amount of the crushing weight I was constantly carrying lift itself off of my shoulders. It might have been a particularly grey day, but it didn't dampen my mood at all. Then again, there wasn't a lot to be dampened. I had been told that I was getting better, I had been told that I could stay at home if I continued to stay "the way I was". What did that even mean? Sure, I wasn't as bad as I maybe had been once upon a time, in a far away and darkened land that I was forced to acknowledge as my past, but I definitely wasn't normal. Probably far from it. I was still "the girl who went mad" to most of the people I had been to school with, my friend Lola kept me in the loop and even though I never texted back, she never stopped sending me daily messages, my daily "Hey Annalise," describing all of the latest scandals and dramas that we used to have many enjoyable evenings ridiculing. I missed it at times. The gossip. Not school. What kind of weird and geeky person enjoys school? Maybe a bit harsh, but a genuine question.

It was three pm by the time I had reached my regular thinking spot, a branch in a tree that stood at the far end of my local park. I'd chosen that one as I often got some funny looks, it was almost as if the general public weren't expecting to see a slightly emo-looking seventeen year old perched a few feet above their vacant heads. This way, there was no chance of being laughed at, made fun of or maybe even photographed. Londoners were weird for the most part however the rich ones were a whole new level, I found. I hated where I lived. It seemed like they were all too far up their own backsides to care about any of the people who were living on the Earth with them and that was why I seemed to spend half of my life up in a tree. I reached into my pocket for the worn and well thumbed notebook that was residing in the pocket of my hoodie and ran my fingertips over the spine thoughtfully. I had carried the same notebook with me everywhere I went for the last two years. When I was at home, it stayed hidden under my mattress. The prospect of my family finding it terrified me. Should you be terrified of your own family? Who knows. Probably not. I wasn't even terrified of them as individuals, just terrified of them finding out the secret thoughts that I constantly worked so hard to hide from them. It would scare them, I know it would, and they're already scared of me. That's what happens when you are the mentally unstable middle child who dropped out of school to go to a psychiatric hospital in a well off family from London. It meant that you were either deemed as one big failure, a crazy person or just ignored altogether. I could never decide which was worse. Being a failure was nothing new, but being ignored felt just as hurtful as being the punchline of all of the jokes and catching the lingering stares just as the person staring hurriedly looked away. Of course, I always glared daggers at those who were caught. It made me feel slightly better to watch them squirm uncomfortably under my gaze, but only for a little bit.

I hoisted myself up onto the comfiest branch, keeping a tight hold on my notebook before settling down and opening it up, allowing the thoughts from my abnormally and unpredictable as fuck brain to flow through the nib of my chewed up pen and translate themselves into words on a page. Sure, every counsellor I'd ever had the displeasure of seeing had told me that having a creative outlet would be good for me, but I liked to tell myself that this was all my idea. And as I wrote down words without having to think, I let my mind wander to the mistake I had made last night. Why did I take it into my own hands to write a blog post? Who even did that? I did, apparently. Nine times out of ten, a drunk Annalise meant that dire mistakes were made - for example waking up with intricate artwork carved into my arms with red lines. This was different. There would be no immediate consequences, no infection, no scabbing over and no pale white lines that appeared a couple of weeks later. No, nothing like that. Instead there was an underlying sick feeling and a dull, nagging ache that came from the knot of fear that had decided to reside in the pit of my stomach. There was that, but nothing else. Only a couple of paragraphs published on the internet that people would either scoff and snort at but also the unlikely chance that maybe one person would read it and maybe have the most vague idea of what I was going through or maybe would relate to it on a deeper level? What was I kidding myself? The chances of some depressed, lost and lonely teenager finding a blog of a fellow nobody at almost 2am on a random night in April was not very likely. Pigs might fly before that happens. Pigs will fly before that happens. Ok, so maybe I'm disconnecting myself from everyone else, and it isn't that I'm "not like other girls" but I'm not the normal seventeen year old that I wish I was. It was just a drunken blog post. It happens. And even if it doesn't usually happen, it could have been worse. It could have been much, much worse.

"Hey Anne," I heard my mum yell from the living room as I kicked off my dripping wet shoes (there were puddles) and slung them carelessly by the laces over the radiator in the hallway.

"Hi," I called back, my voice toneless yet somehow showing some degree of kindness at the same time. The kindness was, admittedly, quite out of the ordinary for me, pretty out of character but that was what the effect of sitting in a tree had on me. It made my buzzing brain that bit less angry and even if it was temporary, I knew it was welcomed by my family who were forced to spend time and put up with me every single day of my life so far. Let's be real, I wasn't going to be moving out any time soon. I had no qualifications, no job, no money and also no ability to look after myself.

"Have you had a nice day?" my mum continued to call me as I walked through to the kitchen and struggled with opening the bread box - it had been bought just for show until the day where, woe betide us, we were forced to use it. I ripped the end off of the end of a slightly stale baguette and slammed the lid of the box shut again before doing an awkward imitation of a jog through to the living room and flopping down onto the soft white sofas and ignoring the frown of warning from my mum over the prospect of getting bread crumbs all over her beloved throw pillows.

"It was alright... yours?" She ignored my question and continued with a speech that I could almost guarantee that she had prepared in advance when she was out of the house.

"What time did you eventually get up? You should really stop spending all of your life in bed, it's not good for you. Do you want to throw your life away any more? It's not that difficult to get up and dressed Annalise-"

"Mum." I interrupted, feeling my voice rumbling in my throat like some sort of ominous thunder that would lash out and quickly become a presence that was entirely out of my control.

"I know you're still having your weekly meetings with Sandra, but you could at least try to put an effort in at home to talk to me and your father-"
"You know what mum," I started, each word quiet and precise, "I won't ever talk to you. Not when you tell me to get up and get my life together after what went on last year. I'm not sure it's deemed as socially acceptable to tell your daughter who has previously been admitted to a 'loony bin' to get her life together. What would your friends at your book club say if they found out?" I felt the poison in my words and tried to stop. But when you're Annalise Doherty, you can't just stop. At that moment, it was either full on detonation of my mother or leaving.

Leave Annie. It isn't worth it.

And so I listened to my instinct, one more scowl shot at her trying to defend her previous words and reprimand me for my outburst which just faded into white noise by the time I reached my room.