Oh, hey! This blog isn't just going to be moaning about my personal life! YAY!
On the other hand, I am going to have to bring some of it in here to make my point. Anyway! Moving on!
This post has to do with this Wall Street Journal article. (Yes, it's from two days ago. Sorry, Interwebz, but I've been working. And, you know, getting money.) I will take this time to admit that I did not read the whole thing. I got outraged, and closed the tab. It was rather like my reaction to reading New Moon the first time, except that I could only metaphorically throw this article at the wall.
For those of you who are too interested in what I have to say to read the actual article (haha, aren't I funny?), it deals with how bad YA books are and how they can contaminate the children and make them do terrible, awful things, like sex and drugs and cutting. Thanks for your concern, but most of the druggies I know don't bloody read. Yes, you read that correctly. They do not pick up books, let alone read them.
Trust me. These are kids who pride themselves on never reading anything, kids who refuse to even start reading school books in case them might actually like the books (oh, the horrors!) and then end up finishing them, only to discover, Oh bugger, their record is broken!
And then there's sex. Tell me, have you ever read Story of A Girl by Sara Zarr? I'm in the middle of reading it, and it's fascinating. It tells the story of a girl who was found having sex with a sixteen-year-old. The girl was thirteen at the time. The story commences about three years later, and shows exactly where Deanna's choice led her; her father cannot have a normal conversation with her; her mother tries so hard to make things seem normal; she has a reputation at school for being a slut, because she had sex with one guy. If I had not already promised myself to my future husband (as the ring on my finger shows), this stark portrayal of the crap that can go down would have convinced me.
Now let's talk about cutting. Everyone has five fingers on each hand, right? Okay, let's not count the thumb. If my arithmetic serves me well, that makes four, yes? That's how many people in my life know exactly why I was out of school for more than two weeks back in January; my parents, and my two female best friends. My male best friend does not know. My little sister does not know. My big brothers do not know. My confidant-in-all-things-depression-wise does not know. My friends have been convinced I had pnuemonia.
The absolute truth? I had been hospitalized for self-injury. I spent two and a half weeks going through a program to deal with it. I told everyone that it had been happening for a year. This was a lie. I had been cutting for more than two years at that point, but I'd be darned if I told anyone. I'm not going to get into what started it; that's a story for another post.
There are two common categories for the reason people hurt themselves; A) they have so much emotional pain, they invoke physical pain to distract themselves (sort of like whacking something really hard so you have something other than your, say, headache to focus on), or B) what they're experiencing is a numbness so acute that they will do anything just to feel something. I personally moved between the two.
Now, you're probably asking yourself, "Where is this kid going? What does this have to do with YA books?" I'm getting to that.
Now, for this length of time, I more than once thought about killing myself. A lot of things kept me from it; the thought that doing so would be selfish, a promise I had made to my best friend to not hurt myself at all, but mostly, it was the escape I found in books.
One of my favorite series is Redwall, by the late Brian Jacques. The paperback copies of his books are relatively compact; short, thin books (height- and width-wise, I mean) with an average of 300+ pages and rather small print, a single book will fit in hoodie pockets, cargo shorts, and nicely-sized purses, and multiple books fit easily in a backpack for car trips. They are easy to take anywhere, is what I'm saying, and I did.
In the two+ years that I was hurting myself, I fought the impulse, when I had the strength, by reading, because it took away the pain. The stories I read were beautifully painted, with scenery rich in detail and characters you cared about. Anyone could get lost in these worlds, and that was exactly what I used them for. When burning through the life of Martin the Warrior, my own life was gone, and all that mattered was his. When turning the pages of Marlfox, the lives of Songbreeze and Donflor were far more pertinent than my own. These books were not without tragedy; Brian Jacques was one of few authors I've experienced who knew the true value of character death, and how much better it makes a story when properly executed (pun not intended).
Though important, telling hurting teens that they are not alone is not the only thing that books can do. YA fiction provides an escape from their own world that is much safer than drugs or alcohol; the only way you can get hurt a book is by getting hit over the head with it, and there's no such thing as a book overdose.
Since getting out of the hospital, I have not once hurt myself, and I've read more in the past five months than in the three years previous. The pain and the problems aren't gone, not by a long shot, but my books give me the strength I need to fight, hope that one day it will all be better, and faith in a happy ending.
Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, and this isn't how anyone else views books. Maybe I really am just the nutcase in the corner, hiding behind her shield of books. Then again, there's a good chance that one of my best friends is lying on her bed right now, her nose in the YA book I gave her, reading about pirates and mountains and warriors, and not thinking about her fight with her boyfriend, or the fact that she needs a job if she's going to go to college, or that she was pretty damn close to failing physics this year, or that she might not even graduate with me. There's a good chance that another of my best friends is sitting on his couch, unconcerned with the fact that his parents can't send him to a good college, that he can't even take AP tests, that his little brother is once again being a prat, and that he can't hang out with his friends because he never has the money, because his mind is buried under human gods and troll gods and intricacies between kingdoms and godly wars.
So these books aren't for everyone. So they don't save all the people who need saving. At least they give it a damn good try, and grab everyone who is within reach. Every single YA author that has gotten even one letter thanking them for saving a life, no matter how bad anyone says their book(s) is/are, should be given a hug, a handshake, or a clap on the back, and a resounding "Thank you" from the world, because saving just one life is something huge.
