take me with you when you go
"I feel like my whole life I've been playing this game called This Is Not As Bad As That. I would tell myself that our life with Mom and Darren wasn't as bad as if they'd sexually abused us. Or hit us hard enough to break bones. Or kicked us out when they threatened to. Or prevented us from seeing Meemaw, the one person who actually tried to love us. It could always be worse. I've listed all the ways it could be worse. This Is Not As Bad As That.
Why didn't anyone ever tell me this was the wrong game to play? Why didn't I understand how broken my frame of reference was, and that I wasn't the person who'd broken it?"
- Take Me With You When You Go, David Levithan & Jennifer Niven
I've been reading this new David Levithan & Jennifer Niven which is coming out this August, and... well, I knew that this book might be kind of a minefield for me - Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places completely transported me into the frame of mind I was in back in my early college days, which is a dangerous frame of mind for me to be in. It's one of those books that I appreciated but will probably never read again, and might not have read if I had known better.
Take Me With You When You Go is an epistolary novel consisting of (mostly) emails written between Bea and her younger brother Ezra. Bea had run away from home with no clues left behind, except for an email address left behind for Ezra. Their emails slowly reveal the life Bea had left behind, the aftermath of her disappearance, and the reason Bea left. All of this is interesting, but really, what drew me in, as is usually the case when I read David Levithan collaborations, were the characters. My late sister and I used to write similar emails when I was off to college, and then when she was in medical school, so the long rambly emails felt very real to me. (I still regret losing my old Yahoo email address because I no longer have access to most of the emails we wrote. I only have a couple left, from after I switched to gmail.) Both Bea and Ezra seemed like people I could've easily been as a young person, and their home life definitely felt like familiar, dangerous territory.
Like the mother in Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock (my favourite book of all time) and the parents in Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest, Bea and Ezra's mother... neglects them. I've always found this specific kind of neglect odd, because it's invisible - in the eyes of everyone else they had access to food and shelter and education and they were pretty privileged. My own childhood was better off because I had a father who just didn't seem to notice us most of the time, rather than a Darren who was verbally abusive and would break Bea and Ezra's few possessions if they angered him. But my mother was more of a Darren, I guess, so it wasn't that different. And I remembered how difficult it was to even verbalise what it was like.
Most people I tried to talk to dismissed my experiences, because to them if abuse wasn't physical then it wasn't real. I learned to shrink into myself and I learned to be invisible and I learned to detach myself from reality when I needed to. But I didn't learn that this childhood wasn't normal, even though my siblings weren't treated quite in the same way. I didn't realise that this was wrong, because everyone always dismissed everything I said, so I told myself that it probably wasn't that bad, that it definitely could be worse. I told myself this, until I started reading Diana Wynne Jones and recognised most of the parents that the children end up realising were wrong.
I think Bea and Ezra were ahead of me in that regard, but there's feeling that something is wrong and there's knowing it as a fact, I guess. And it takes them awhile to realise that perhaps it isn't them that are wrong and unfixable, it is the situation they're in. And as long as tomorrow comes, there is a possibility for them to make changes.
I want to end this with that upbeat, hopeful note, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't point out that they really are privileged in a their own way - not every abused kid can just leave their home and be safe, let alone be safe with the chance to finish school and go to college and find their way to a better life. I really like the fact that this book shows that the support we're supposed to have growing up doesn't have to be the only thing supporting us - Ezra and Bea survive thanks to many kind strangers, friends, and boyfriends. I think it's an important thing to point out, especially to young adults reading this that might feel like there's no way out of the situations they're in. But not everyone have these other support systems, and I think that needs pointing out, too.
(Sorry. It's just - I grew up in the 90s, where most of the books I read about runaways or teens thrown out of their homes end up very differently.)
Even so... as long as tomorrow comes, there is a possibility for change. The person I was as a teen would never even think I'd still be alive now, so, hey! That means there is still hope, I hope.
other stuff going on
- I'm going for my first jab today, so... wish me luck!
- Would it be annoying if I end up writing weekly or every other week, or whenever the mood strikes? You know, instead of monthly like I used to? I'm still not sure myself.
- Disney+ is coming to Malaysia on the same day as our annual stock take, so I won't be able to check it out until much later, but still. I can't wait!