Depression throughout the story

Depression throughout the story is neither a passing sadness nor a condition that disappears once it has been named. The novel gives it different forms in Gideon and Ava Spirini: for Gideon, it is part of a longer history of therapy, medication, and learning to speak about what has been difficult to disclose; for Ava, it is entangled with bereavement, anger, and the strange numbness of returning to ordinary routines after Kelly Waititi’s death. Their experiences are not interchangeable, but both resist the idea that recovery means feeling well all the time.

Identity and Background

Gideon’s history with depression predates the scenes in which he discusses it with Ava Spirini. He has been seeing Robbie since his family moved, and Robbie is the fourth therapist he has tried. Gideon distinguishes Robbie from the previous therapists, whom he found old, frustrating, or patronising: Robbie does not make assumptions about Gideon’s sexuality or identity based on his clothes, family, or scars. The relationship begins with ordinary conversation and humor rather than an immediate demand for disclosure. Robbie does not initially question him about depression, medication, self-harm, hospitalization, or bullying; instead, the two talk about entertainment and argue over television shows. Four years later, Robbie is still Gideon’s therapist. The duration matters: their work is an ongoing relationship, not a single revelation that settles the problem.

Gideon’s account of his mental state also complicates the idea that depression describes every moment in the same way. He sorts his experience into five states: pre-anxiety, high anxiety, hyper-awareness, a manageable version of normal, and depression. These states can overlap or shift in prominence, but he distinguishes the flatness and diminished energy of depression from the more agitated fear of anxiety. In the depressed state, positive as well as negative experiences seem muffled, while distress can continue to build internally. The description makes visible a condition that others may not recognize from appearance alone: Gideon can look like an awkward teenager passing as ordinary while privately managing states that remain present beneath that surface.

Treatment, Recurrence, and Daily Life

Gideon connects improvement to seeing Robbie and taking medication, and says he has not experienced the full force of depression since those changes began. That is not the same as saying depression has ended. He still experiences days, moments, or afternoons when it seems to return. The image he uses is of an interruption that makes him turn toward something that is no longer there: a brief, disorienting recurrence rather than a steady, easily measured decline. The distinction between sustained illness and its returning traces gives his account an uneven rhythm.

His anxiety further shows how mental distress can disrupt ordinary tasks without making the task itself unusually consequential. Gideon describes becoming caught in thoughts about being late to job interviews, failing to attend, and concealing that failure from his parents. In another example, an everyday delay caused by a learner driver becomes a source of intense alarm. He can sometimes use loose mindfulness strategies and deep breathing to settle early anxiety, but not always. These episodes should not be collapsed into depression: the narrative names different states and shows how they can coexist within one life. Gideon’s broader account is of continual management, not a clean division between illness and health.

Poetry and the Work of Disclosure

Poetry gives Gideon a form for making an experience that once felt difficult to admit into something he can examine. In Broken, he links a childhood broken ankle and its cast to the less visible effects of becoming depressed at fourteen. The poem turns on a contrast between physical injury, which other people can see and respond to, and distress that carries stigma and cannot be recognized in the same way. Its central assertion is that depression does not make a person lesser, even while the effort of enduring it continues from day to day.

Gideon wrote the poem about a year before performing it, and this is the first time he has shown it to anyone. He explains that putting thoughts on paper makes them tangible: instead of continuing to circle inside his head, they become something he can look at and gradually become accustomed to. When he first wrote the word depressed, it felt like an admission. With time, the poem became something he had made, rather than simply a confession or a definition of himself. At the performance, the audience applauds; Norma and Andy cheer, and his mothers are moved. The poem also receives an honorable mention and a ten-dollar coffee-shop voucher. The public reading does not erase the experience it describes, but it changes the terms of its disclosure: Gideon can present the work as a poem and be witnessed without being reduced to a diagnosis.

Ava Spirini, Bereavement, and Numbness

Ava Spirini’s account develops in the aftermath of Kelly Waititi’s death. Six months later, she has only recently returned to school full-time, after a period of part-time attendance, and describes struggling to concentrate, missing school, and feeling bodily numbness and sadness. She resents other people’s claims that their own bereavements mean they understand her, because Kelly was her best friend and the loss feels specific and inexpressible. The pace of time itself seems altered to Ava; she feels as if it has slowed since Kelly died. She also perceives others as impatient with both Kelly and her, as though she should already have recovered. Her conviction that she may feel this way for the rest of her life shows how the present pain stretches into an imagined future.

That grief does not exclude brief relief. Ava reflects that time with Lincoln can make other problems recede and let her feel something besides misery, in a way that recalls how she felt when Kelly was alive. She also recognizes the contradiction: this closeness would not have happened if Kelly were still there. Later, after a night that includes drinking, an argument, and emotional distress, Ava feels both embarrassment and gratitude that she did not make another choice she might regret. These moments do not establish that depression has lifted, or that grief is resolved. They show instead that feeling better for a time and continuing to suffer can belong to the same period of mourning.

Change and Continuing Care

Ava’s later account preserves that complexity. A year after Kelly’s death, Ava can feel calm while recognizing that sadness, hurt, anger, confusion, grief, and love remain. The change is not that these feelings have vanished, but that, in that moment, they do not overwhelm her. She continues to see Nola for therapy every fortnight. Nola’s box analogy gives Ava a way to think about difficult feelings without treating them as wrong; the emphasis is on the choices made in response to those feelings and the consequences those choices can have.

Gideon’s treatment and poetry, and Ava’s therapy and changing capacity to hold grief, present different forms of ongoing care. Neither character’s story turns distress into a simple before-and-after account. The novel instead attends to fluctuation: a public performance can make disclosure more bearable without ending depression; an afternoon of relief does not cancel bereavement; and calm can coexist with pain that remains. Depression is therefore represented not only through its isolating effects, but also through the work of finding language, accepting support, and making room for states that do not resolve on command.