For awhile now I've been trying to finish writing a ya novel that I started years ago. It is a problem novel about an abusive teen relationship. I've had problems getting into, so I decided to re-read my favorite Sarah Dessen book, Dreamland, which is also about an abusive teen relationship. When I was in high school and read it, it made me feel happy, that anyone else in the world could read it and possibly know all my secrets, without really knowing they were mine.
Well, I finished reading it last night, and was not ready for what I felt. As it turns out, I am much happier forgetting what it was like back then. In the book, Caitlyn, who tries everything to be something different than anyone expects, ends up in the arms of a "bad boy" who deals drugs and beats her up. Now, I didn't get beat up. I didn't even get hit, really, at least until much later--when it was much too late to make any real changes. But things that happened to Caitlyn hit way too close to home, and I don't know why I was so surprised at how I felt when reading them.
For instance, rushing through a crowd, maybe school, to get to him before he had to wait a minute. Never going anywhere, afraid he would come, and wait, growing angry, and then find me. Shutting out all the friends that would let me, knowing if they got close they would know something was wrong, and then when that one friend finally wouldn't take no for an answer and "kidnapped" me, the fear, the constant dialing, wishing he would pick up. Then after I sat crying on her living room floor as time ticked away, his exhaust rumbled in the driveway. He always found me. And once again, I let him drag me away from a life I missed desperately.
I remember, like Caitlyn, being terrified of other men talking to me--at church, school, on the phone, even wrong numbers. How class was the safest place I could be. He would never find me in class, never interested enough to figure out my schedule or the buildings on the big college campus. Maybe that's why I did so well in school, knowing that as long as I was in college, I'd have those classrooms with the thick wooden doors that he'd never open to find me.
I remember when guys from my classes would see me at the gas station or grocery store. Even if it was just a "Hi, this must be your husband", that was enough to make me dread the long walk across the parking lot to our car, he refusing to hold my hand, jaw set, cursing under his breath. Then when the doors closed would lay into me "So, what have you told people about me?...How many times have you f*cked that guy?...I wish I knew what kind of (insert the worse female curse) you'd turn out to be before I married you." Usually that was enough. He liked to just make me feel small, and helpless. Other times he would throw things, big or small, leaving bruises that he said were accidents because I "should've gotten out of the way" and they were my fault anyway, because I made him do those things.
The worst part of reading Dreamland was remembering the fierce protection I had for him over myself. Wanting to hide his flaws, hoping no one would see, praying that everyone could still believe I was some semblance of what I was before. Even after we finally split up, I missed him the way Caitlyn missed Rogerson, and had to go to a "shrink" to put me back together.
Obviously I don't miss him now, or that life, but I am having trouble deciding if reading the book again was a good or bad idea. I probably won't read it again, ever. I really hope young girls don't pick it up and have the feelings I did while reading it. Even though I do know there are young girls out there that have fallen in love with that "bad boy", and that learn the wrong ways to love before they even learn what love should be. Mostly, it makes me really sad, and I'm glad that someone thought to write a book about it. It's all well and good to read a love story and fantasize about what life could be, but it's altogether different to read a love story that's your story and know that just maybe another person on the planet has gone through it.
Not sure what the point is I'm trying to make, other than the obvious--I needed to say all this. I don't think I have before. And there's still a lot I haven't ever said, but my story hasn't been told yet.
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