“Sorry if I made things weird,” he says. “I’m not usually so upfront about my, um, depression.”
Let’s be honest, talking about mental health in books can be messy. Every character, like every human, has a different experience, so you want to make sure you’re not playing into stereotypes. Leon’s depression and Cal’s mom’s anxiety all come from my own experiences, so it was important for me to have multiple characters with multiple mental health experiences, all at different points in their journey towards understanding (and potentially treating) them.
You’ll notice later on that, as Leon’s depression gets discussed on the page, Kat is the only person who can talk about his depression directly. His parents are worried that they’ve somehow caused it, Cal’s still trying to learn how to be the person Leon needs, but Kat acknowledges it directly. Since I’m an only child, I don’t write siblings too often, but even for her relatively small screen time (page time?) you can really feel the bond between these two siblings.
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