Ended, Not Abandoned

Three years ago, I felt abandoned by my therapist L. I remember curling up into a ball on his couch, a few months before I graduated from undergrad. I muttered something about wondering if he would miss me when I graduated. I felt a tight ball of shame in my stomach, like my desire for him to miss me marked me as too needy, or disgusting.

“Of course I’ll miss you,” he said. “I’ll miss you a lot.”

I struggled to believe L: to believe that he liked me, that he cared about me, that he wasn’t abandoning me.

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On Nurturance

As a child, I thought a lot about the meaning of my life. I thought a lot about the meaning of my life especially after my mother would yell at me for hours on end – why would anyone put me on this earth so this woman could scream at me and make me want to kill myself? I remember typing on my laptop at some point, during sixth grade or earlier, with tears running down my face: I was put on this earth to make a difference, to stop people like her from hurting others. While other kids thought about prom and popularity and potential first romances, I felt dedicated to escaping my home and then devoting my life to helping others help themselves.

Except escaping my home marked just the start of my healing.

Imagine

Over the past few weeks my PTSD symptoms have flared up fierce. Thoughts about losing control of my life and relationships run around and around in my head, I play back scenarios I starred in and emails I wrote and wonder if I should have done something different, I have horrible nightmares all the time, like one about a lion chasing and eating me on the street of my childhood home.

Today, PTSD struck me hard.

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

Cover via Goodreads.

Rating: 5/5 stars.

As someone who wrote an entire research paper on the importance of YA fiction and the genius of Laurie Halse Anderson, I own up to my bias. The Impossible Knife of Memory captures so much of what I love about young-adult contemporary and realistic fiction. It possesses a witty and cynical narrator, it delves into a real and painful issue, and it offers a nuanced yet meaningful message of hope.

Hayley Kincaid divides the human race into two types of people: the freaks and the zombies.