I Wrote A List This Week

This isn't all that uncommon a thing for me to do. I write lots of lists. Lists of books I want need to get. Lists of things I have to do. Lists of what my mom needs me to get at the store. I remember things better when I write them down, and I feel more accomplished when I check things off. Plus, I know that everything is done when the whole list is finished.

But this list is a special list. This list is a list of things I need to bring with me to college.

I'm sure some of you are thinking "Already? It's only the beginning of May!" I'm sure I'd be thinking that, too, if the person were anyone other than me. But only if I didn't know the reason. The reason I already wrote this list is that I'm leaving soon. Twenty-three days from now, actually.

See, I got a job this summer, working at my college. My big brother goes there, and he hooked me up at the theater he works at. I'll be working forty hours a week, and living with his awesome, geektastic girlfriend, Jordan. This is going to be a huge change for me; I know that it will be Fun and A Good Experience, but it could also be Frightening and Lonely, and it will definitely be New and Different. I have many complicated feels about this, and it will probably be a good thing for me to get them down and sort them out.

The first think I'd like to address is my house and homelife. In this aspect, things can only get better. Yes, I'll be providing for myself, living with someone who I have only met three or four times, and will have to manage everything on my own, but I honestly can only see this as an improvement. I currently live with my parents and two younger sisters; my oldest brother has moved out, and lives in Chicago, and I will be joining my other big brother in Wisconsin this summer. I love my family, don't get me wrong, but my baby sister (she's almost nine now, but she'll always be the baby) has an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and it can make life hell sometimes. She can be this sweet little girl, who loves to hug you and hang out with you and looks up to me and our other sister so much and wants to be just as cool as we are, but suddenly, with no visible cause, she can become unreasonable, throwing fits over the smallest thing; she won't respect our personal space, she has no filter between her brain and her mouth, and never thinks how hurtful the things she says can be, she doesn't get that sometimes, big girls are irritable and in so much pain they literally cannot move and just don't have the patience or the will to deal with anything stressful.

I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea. Like I said, I love her, with all my heart, and I will do anything to help her. I'm so grateful to the people at her school, to the staff, who know exactly how to handle her, and to the other students, who love her imagination and think she's the coolest and are almost always so nice to her and make her feel like the most popular girl in school and, really, I think she might be. I'm so happy that she can have that, because I know the hell that kids with mental disabilities can go through in school. I flew completely off the handle one day in Gym class because the teacher was being an ass to someone like my sister, and nobody said so much as a negative word about the kid in my hearing for the rest of the year. I hope that my baby sister doesn't ever have anything like that happen to her, but if she does, I hope that there is someone like me to stand up for her.

Now that I (hopefully) have convinced you of my love of my sister, I think it's safe to say that she is one of the things that make me cry the most often. The unreasonableness, the temper tantrums, the just not getting the fact that Neenie and I just need to be left alone sometimes, are so hard to reconcile with the sweet girl she can be. It's desperately difficult to deal with, and there are times when I have to babysit her, and once she's in bed, I just sit down and cry, and I'm damn certain that it will be so much easier when I don't have to deal with that sort of thing on a daily basis. But then I love her so much, it hurts to think that.

Also included in my homelife are my parents. I remember saying, when I was little, how my parents were probably the best parents in the world. I think back and remember that, and then remember how much they managed to screw up. Maybe Neenie and Grace have it best, because my parents had three kids to practice on before them, or maybe what they do is more noticeable. Or maybe my parents were so afraid of doing the wrong thing that they did it anyway.

When Neenie was in fourth grade, her teacher was a bitch of the highest degree. This was the final year in our elementary school before the students started switching classes; English, spelling, math, science, social studies, all were taught by the same teacher, so Neenie had to spend the whole day with the same woman. My sister would come home sobbing, because the teacher made fun of her, almost every single day. My parents went to see the principal, and I think I'm going to love that woman for my whole life because of what she did. She couldn't fire the teacher, because the pastor had the final say in those matters (don't get me started on him), but she told Neenie that she could come down to the office whenever she needed to, because the teacher was being mean, because another student was being mean, or just because Neenie was feeling down. So my parents did something about that. They don't seem too bad, do they?

Well, look at the other side of the story.

When Neenie was in fourth grade, I was in seventh. Now, I didn't have a teacher going after me, but I had most of my classmates on my back. Neenie has always exuded an aura of confidence (however much we both know she lacks it) that has made her a favorite among her classmates. I never had that. I was smart, geeky, and socially awkward from the ground up. I had been homeschooled until sixth grade, and I didn't have any idea how to interact with my peers until about eighth grade. I'm still kind of clueless. They teased me mercilessly because of this, and I came home crying almost as often as Neenie. My parents never did anything.

When I started to self-injure, I think it was kind of obvious. I'd show up in the morning in my pajamas--a tank top and pajama pants--with cuts criss-crossing my shoulders, but my mom took the cock-and-bull story about falling into bushes that I fed her for the longest time. She only ever did anything about it when my dad saw them, too.

My big brother thinks that she was afraid of making a mistake. Perhaps she was thinking that I was just clumsy and kept taking the same fall over and over, or maybe she was in denial. All that I know is that it made me feel even more alone.

But they did eventually get me help, and I got better.  I'm still better. You could almost say that I'm flourishing. Almost.

They got better, too. They helped me get through things, they did what they could to help me get better, and they were very, very gentle with me. For about five months.

Once those five months were up, though, I started seeming like I was okay again, the support and the gentleness and the care that they had been showing me faded slowly away, until they got to the point where they act like nothing is different from before. They have started, again, some of the behaviors that put me in the hospital in the first place. They yell at me for doing things wrong when I think I'm doing them right but I'm not because my parents have changed the rules again and forgot to tell me. They don't take what I do seriously. They tell me that I need to take time for myself, but get angry with me when I do. They make hurting, cutting remarks that undermine my self-esteem and confidence.

I have to deal with this sort of shit in my own home. And my friends wonder why I think so poorly of myself.

I never get out. I'm trapped in a house that isn't a home, with people who don't seem concerned about my welfare, and I'm dying to just leave. These are the reasons that I got the job at the theater in the first place, and why I'm so happy to be going. But there are reasons that I want to stay, too.

I'm a part of a wonderful youth group. I left St. Damian, the parish of my childhood, and the school where I spent three years learning, to go to a church twenty minutes from where I live, where my only connection is that it was the place my dad and his siblings went to school. Why did I do this, you ask? Because my three years at the school sucked. Because the pastor was a homophobe, and I couldn't sit through another damn sermon about how gays were bad and wrong and going to Hell because they didn't conform to the Bible. Because the place where I ended up had a group of loving, supporting people who let me be myself and stood by me through hell and high water. Because the sixty-something-year-old youth minister told one boy to get off another boy's lap because "that's so gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

They are wonderful human beings, the epitome of what the Catholic Church really should be, who take the real meaning of the word "catholic" to heart, and make it truly universal. I'm going to miss being a part of this group, all the friends I leave behind, the love and support they have given me, and the two hours of being open and honest and just having fun every week, and I know that they are going to miss me.

My social life has taken an upturn recently. Specifically, I actually got asked to prom by a friend of mine, and that's something that I never thought would happen. But this kid; he's a friend of mine, and I've sort of half-liked him ever since we met. He's cute and geeky, and he's one of the few guys I've met who are actually really nice (the total is, like, seven or something, and two of them are my blood brothers and another is like my little brother). I mean, I have quite a few guy friends, but most of them can be complete assholes sometimes.

But anyway, so there's this boy who has asked me to prom. Unfortunately for the both of us, I had to say no. No, I'm not doing anything the night of or whatever. I just really hate dances; I hate dancing and crowds and noise and really bad music, and that's pretty much the summary of a school dance. So we're currently treading those awkward waters frequented by two socially awkward people between a slight miscommunication (he thinks I was out-and-out rejecting him) and clearing it up, but hopefully this will work.

Except that I'm leaving soon, so God only knows where this will actually end up going.

Then there are my other friends. My best guy friend (and my "little brother") and I came up with this hilarious plan to build ourselves a little hut thing behind my house this summer, and it would have been so much fun to build it and paint it and hang out in it all summer before I left for college and he started classes (at a local community college) in the fall. Because I'm going away to work, that plan completely fell through.

This is just a little sample of what's going on. My friends and I had a bunch of plans (road trip, hanging out, swimming, and all sorts of other stuff) that won't happen now because I'm really only going to have ten days of summer break between my last day of school and when I leave to start work.

But the hardest part of leaving is definitely the fact that I don't get to take my little sister and my best friend with me.

These are two different people, but they can both share the same two roles. Neenie, my freshman (they make great pets), has been considered my best friend since sophomore year. I don't know how it happened, other than gradually, but suddenly we were super close and loving each other and still a little teasing but in a nice way now and sharing interests and all sorts of things, sort of like what happened with me and my big brother, Chris, but fortunately before my senior year. Emma Lee, my lovely co-host on our recently-conceived podcast (shameless!plug is shameless), has been my best friend since the first day we met in 2008. We are similar enough for it to be awesome and kind of freaky, but different enough that we fill in the gaps in the other's character. When a lot of people think about soulmates, they picture the perfect couple. Emma and I aren't in a romantic relationship--we never will be and the thought is pretty weird. We are soulmates, though, completing each other, best friends for forever and a day, and we know we'll make it through hard times because we have done before.

I'm going to miss these two desperately. Even though I don't get to see Emma every day like I do Neenie, it's still going to be hard being so much farther away from her. Nothing will change in our relationships because we are four hours apart, I know that, but it still hurts to leave.

So, when the day comes to go, I'm going to leave with mingled joy and sadness, because sometimes good-bye is a second chance, but the hardest part of this is leaving you.

On YA Literature

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.