TRIGGER WARNING: MENTAL HEALTH

My mother looks at me like I'm fragile, and tip-toes around me like I'm broken glass.

She talks to me like you might talk to a kindergarten student; it's that feigned wide-eyed curiosity, the dove-like tones of condescension and the matching disingenuous actions.

And she monitors me like an orderly at a hospital for the criminally insane, constantly poking her head around the door to track my whereabouts, locking the windows in case 'the voices give me the impulse to jump out' and hides dangerous objects from me. To clarify; that's anything from my dad's old hunting rifles to a pencil sharpener.

Part of me is glad my mother thinks it's just a minor neurosis. That she doesn't know I can read thoughts.

How do you suppose you bring that up in conversation, anyway? "Oh yes, mama... The book you lent me was absolutely exquisite - oh! And by the way! I can read minds! Good evening!" No, no... There's just no way you can broach it with any acumen.

It's not ordinary.

I'm not ordinary.

I mean, you read these Orwellian dystopian novels where gifted or outstanding people are captured and culled. And I don't fancy having a becoming a government experiment. One day it's a biopsy, the next, I'll be splayed out on an operating table, buckled at the ankles and wrists and be gutted like a fish so they can study what makes me tick. Immediately Josef Mengele types are conjured to mind, I shudder at the very thought!

And I know how I sound. Saying I can hear people's thoughts makes me seem like I should be locked up in an insane asylum.

But let me explain to you what it's like inside my head. Inside other people's head, if you will?

The other evening at dinner, my mother and I sat across from each other at our lengthy dining room table.

A side note here about how the table has always been far too big is due. It's been passed down the Xavier bloodline for generations, with its ornamented craftsmanship and expensive treated and glossed wood. It seems even more unnecessary these days now my dad isn't there to fill that empty seat. And we haven't had guests in what seems like an eternity. And when we do, I'm stowed away like Quasimodo; she's ashamed of my abnormality.

She's scared I might do something unhinged to scare off our guests. And make her even more lonely than she already is. The only people who visit these days are family and friends who wish to pay their condolences with bouquets of flowers as some kind of half-assed consolation and trite words to ease the pain of loss.

We both slowly munched through what was a thoroughly boring Sunday roast: a chicken, seasonal roasted vegetables and Yorkshire puddings. And neither of us said a word.

Even without fishing into her mind, I could sense a thousand words resting on the tip of her tongue, I could practically smell the tension between us.

She scooped up the mug she concealed her whiskey in - little did she know she was fooling neither herself or me with the opacity of the mug - and knocked it back.

She downs the stuff like water these days. My father's liquor cabinet is starting to look bare. She's even started dipping into the rare and expensive liquors in an attempt to douse her sorrows. She's too drunk to function some days; going to the shops to stock up on more is out of the question and she has too much pride to ask the household staff to ask her to buy more whiskey.

I picked at the brussel sprouts, munched through the carrots and managed to devour a significant portion of the goose, but it was when I laid down my knife and fork with food still remaining on my plate that my mother finally paid me some attention.

"The rest of this damn country is still suffering rationing, show some respect and clean your plate," she had demanded in an inflectionless voice.

And as soon as that jolt of emotion had entered into the room, it was as if her mind had unlocked itself.

No! It was as if she was projecting her thoughts. Because that's what it's like!

It's not simply like listening to grainy lyrics through a gramophone; it's like having the words broadcasted in large bold letters directly into your mind. It's unignorable. Amplified.

'The damn child doesn't know how lucky he is...' And I gently rested my index finger and middle finger against my forehead, focusing. It's almost like tuning a radio until you find the frequency with the most clarity. 'Just because his father left behind a fortune to him, all in his name - as if a child of his age would know what to do with real estate, company shares and billions of dollars - doesn't mean he can waste the food that I'm paying for with my widow's benefits.' She made a bitter roar in her head followed by: 'After years of marriage you would've thought she'd have left something to me. But of course his precious Charles gets everything.'

Not to say that everyone's thoughts are pleasant, all the time. But then again, that's why people don't vocalise the majority of their inner monologue. I suppose that's why I can't blame them for thinking horrible things. I'm the one eavesdropping, they're saying nothing to me.

And I don't bat an eyelid. I can't bat an eyelid. I can't clue her in; no matter how harmful her thoughts may be. So many insults have been hurled in my direction unbeknownst to me, except now they're not.

Charles Darwin once said 'The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.' Only now do I truly understand what he meant by it.

But that's just focusing on the negatives.

There's so much more to this... telepathy? Lark.

I don't mean to exploit it, I really don't - and in all honesty, I'm still not sure how to activate it at opportune times, or deactivate it - but it came in particularly handy the other day in class testing; just standard tests to track our progress, nothing major, so I didn't feel too guilty. There is a pattern that has begun to emerge, in times of heightened emotion, people's thoughts seem to ring out more clearly, and I seem to be able to read them more easily. I couldn't give you the science behind it though.

And do you know what? Even after delving inside everyone's heads, it's strange how isolated I feel. Out of all the people I've come across, I'm yet to meet someone like me. Surely I can't be the only one like this?

By god, I feel so alone.

There is no possible way I can tell anyone without being written off as delusional, and without endangering myself because I'm different. Who would I tell anyway? It's not like I have any friends and the only family that lives in the United States is my mother.

I'm always alone and I'm never alone. I always have the voices of more than one person inside my head, impinging on my mind at every waking moment.

Do you know, it's funny what you might discover about someone when you flick through their thoughts like books in a library?

You may happen to find that the kid who decided to trip you whilst carrying a teetering stack of books happens to get the same done to him at home. You might happen to find that the bruise you have colouring your hip is but a mirror of the one said kid has beneath his rough exterior. You may happen to find that all of the cruel names he brands you with are but an echo of the ones he has yelled at him at home.

Everyone has their secrets. Some more life altering than others. And if there's one thing I've learnt from this gift/ordeal, it's that you truly can't judge a book by its cover.

Because, like I said, everyone has their secrets; and mine just happens to be the fact that I'm a mind reading freak.

Do you know, the children in my class, they still haven't let me live it down? My outburst, that is. If they're not talking about it, they're thinking about it. And my teacher, she looks at me like a catholic priest might look at the devil.

She knows.

She doesn't know that I know she knows. Are you still following?

She doesn't tell anyone. Because she knows she'll be branded as delusional as I am if she tells anyone.

But she knows.

She thinks about talking to me about it.

It always starts with a thoughtful sweep around the classroom, but her eyes always settle on me. And they settle just a moment too long. It's always the same.

'I should tell him. Just mention it in passing, off hand, see if he reacts. But what if he thinks I'm insane? What if he tells other students? What if he tells other teachers? What if I end up losing my job? I'll make it subtle. I'll ask him about his opinions on mind reading and the occult. No... No, how will I work that into conversation?'

And she fears me. When we lock eyes, she flinches. Her eyes dart away, but they always stray back, just to check if I'm still watching.

And it's funny how fast the mind works in comparison to the mouth. It's a thousand thoughts in a split second, and sometimes it leaves me with an ice-cream headache. In the time it takes her to blink, her mind has already wandered.

But I'm discovering everyday that there's new facets to this ability still to uncover. It's not only being able to read minds, it's being able to speak to them too. The same way their thoughts are streamed directly into my head, I can stream mine directly into theirs.

It's strange. Reaching out to other minds in the way I do builds some kind of bridge between consciousnesses; and a bridge can be crossed in either direction. But so far, I haven't managed to achieve actual communication, it's more like mentally holding hands with someone. You make your presence known. But nothing is said.

But you can feel their mind pressed against yours: their bulk of memories, their forever active consciousness, their emotions.

It's raw.

And so tangible.

And so intimate.

Can you imagine sharing your mind with someone? Can you imagine experiencing their memories? Can you imagine feeling their emotions?

It's also invasive. I shouldn't do it, I know. I've discovered plenty I shouldn't know and didn't want to know by playing lucky dip with people's minds. But you learn an awful lot about people who don't say or do an awful lot.

And perhaps this ability makes me more empathetic? A better person? More tolerant?

It's funny how we spend our lives living inside one body, refined to our own brains and our own pair of eyes. Our view of the world is limited, biased, unique. We don't get to live any other life but our own. And I think that limitation makes us blind, sometimes, to the lives of other people. We may have our own lives we lead, but too often is it forgotten that we don't live as an island; our life runs alongside so many others and how we react is part of a larger domino effect.

I'm biased. I'll admit it.

But this change, this mind-reading capability, it's opened my eyes to so much I thought I'd never know.

It's all well and good me writing down my complaints like there's only cons to this surreal superpower - but that's probably hereditary British tendencies for you - but there's so much more to it. So much beauty.

And I'm the lucky one who gets to experience it.

A/N - It's been nearly two weeks since I last updated this, eek!

Dedication goes to JustLettingGo for saying that this is her favourite one of my works yet! (Thank you, darling!) x