Highest common factor

depression & writing

Reading time: 9 minutes

The stationery shop near my school had the most exquisite selection of notebooks that the owner neatly stacked according to size first thing in the morning, only to be left in a mess later in the day, usually before check-out when students chickened out to pay. The notebooks, gel pens and erasers in various types and colours, and most importantly, stickers that I would slap on pretty much everything I owned would call out to me like a paper-mache siren. The brutal decision-making that followed wouldn’t be about ‘what to get’ as I always knew what I liked, but how to budget my bare pocket money, although in the end, I would be satisfied whether I got a strawberry-scented eraser or a fat chicken dürüm and somewhat cold ayran.

‘Maddy knew who she was from a very early age.’

I thought owning exquisite stationery was the pinnacle of education, not studying and getting good grades. I was simply obsessed with how things looked, whether they looked good, and how I could m…