I have spent all week cleaning up vomit. Most of it canine. Some, I'd hazard to guess, feline. Sadly this is just the way the cookie crumbles when your pets get into the garbage. All there is left to do is shrug and grab the mop. Again. This is really not my favourite pet-care chore. In fact, it's my least favourite. It turns my stomach. As a nurse, there's not a lot of bodily fluids that have this effect on me. I'd like to think I've mostly suppressed my disgust reflex. But vomit? No. Never. However, I would gladly wipe up puke off the floor all day long than ever subject myself to Adorkable by Sarra Manning again. Ever. This book caused me pain.

That old familiar jaw-ache reared it's ugly head when I was first introduced to our delightful main character and co-narrator, Jeane Smith. Jeane is super cool and totes amazeballs at life. That is, if your definition of cool is being completely vile to anyone who wanders into your vicinity, purposely dressing as if you are colour blind or insane or just really lazy with your laundry and cultivating a deep seated, frightening superiority complex.

Jeane's a self sufficient, 17 year old living in London and running her online empire - Adorkable: the brand, from her living room. She has all the usual "boy trouble", school shit and in the end discovers that it's okay to be different. That's pretty much it. This book is very poorly plotted. There's way too much of Jeane sounding off, Jeane being cruel and abrasive and Jeane verbally and mentally abusing her peers, to fit much actual story line in there. There are a lot of threads begun and then just left loose to flap. Like Jeane's uncomfortable situation with her family which she mentions a few times but makes no move to resolve, or her awkward relationship with her ex-boyfriend who she swears she's still best buds with but never calls, never thinks about and never really sees again. But she does find the time to squeeze in a "relationship" with the most totes amazeballs guy in school, Michael (our second co-narrator) who also happens to be just about the most boring guy ever to breathe. He's wheeled along behind her, cowering from the blindingly, brilliant light of her sheer awesomeness as they half heartedly toss a few bland jokes and insults back and forth. It really is pitiful. The worst of it is that Michael isn't only dull and pathetic. He's also an arrogant self absorbed dick:

Suicide is a tricky thing. It's almost impossible to understand unless you are or have been in that dark, bleak place struggling to get out. It's hurtful, it's confusing, it's frightening and heartbreaking to know that someone you love could be so torn apart inside that they cannot contemplate continuing to live. To experience suicidal thoughts is overwhelming, terrifying but in a sense peaceful. To know there's a way to escape the pain of the unbearable weight of severe depression is, in a funny way an enormous comfort. I feel like even now, in what we would consider to be a modern and progressive society depression and mental illness in general is massively misunderstood. It's difficult for people to handle because so many people just don't get it. I remember hearing all the time people saying, I don't understand self-harm. How could a person deliberately hurt themselves. This is the wrong question to ask of a sufferer. The same way that "Why would you want to kill yourself?" is the wrong question to ask someone having suicidal thoughts. All it serves to do is highlight a lack of understanding and isolate the sufferer further, trivialising their experience as ridiculous. It can be a very lonely place when you're battling depression. It can feel like the whole world is against you, like you have nowhere to turn to get help. Instead of saying "I don't understand" or "How could you do this" how about practising a little empathy.