Daily Archives: February 1, 2010

I cannot love you

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I found out this afternoon that one of the Cheshire murderers tried to commit suicide yesterday, and I realized something. Normally, when I hear that someone tried to take their life, I empathize. I reach out. I wrap them with love and hope, even if we’ve never met. I do this because I have wanted to take my life on more occasions than I can count. I more than understand what it’s like to want to die.

This guy, Steven J. Hayes (46), raped and murdered two young girls and their mother, and badly beat their father. He was helped by his friend, Joshua Komisarjevsky (29). These grown men invaded a Cheshire family’s home after following the mother home from the grocery store so they could rob her.

And I can’t get it out of my head. They wanted to rob this family, but didn’t stop there. It was beyond unnecessary, beyond brutal. Every time I think about it, I want to vomit and cry. It breaks my heart that a thirteen-year-old girl, a seventeen-year-old girl, and their mother lost their lives so violently. It breaks my heart that William Petit, the sole survivor of the invasion, has to live without his girls.

I live probably twenty minutes from their town, in a city, but I still can’t shake the anguish and anger I feel when I think about it.

My model, especially since starting Letters of Love, is to extend love to those who are struggling with depression, self-injury, eating disorders, and addiction. I made it my business to reach out to people who had attempted suicide or thought of it daily.

This is one person I cannot ever love, because I cannot forgive his actions. I can never empathize with him, because his suicide attempt was an act of cowardice, an out because he didn’t want to face the music when his trial begins. He may struggle with himself, he may suffer from depression, but I attribute his depression with an act of pure evil.

Maybe this makes me a hypocrite. I attribute the depression that I and my friends at Letters of Love endure to a real illness that was not born out of evil, something we cannot help. We struggle to keep ourselves safe from ourselves. We try to live normal lives. We do not hurt other people.

But there is a line, blurred, because you could say that Hayes suffers from depression. You could ask, “How is that any different?” And I would answer, “He raped and murdered two young girls and their mother. His depression results from knowing that he is going to trial and faces the death penalty.”

Hayes’s and Komisarjevsky’s acts have destroyed any love I might have for them, because I cannot forgive them for what they did. The way that I feel toward them, a cold, apathetic hatred, scares me, because it is so different from the loving and healing warmth I might give anyone else.

Review | Cut, by Patricia McCormick

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I finished Cut (by Patricia McCormick) last night. Altogether, I think it took me maybe an hour or two to read (it’s only 151 pages). If you haven’t yet, please check out the video review I did when I was about fifty pages in.

Cut by Patricia McCormick

Cut by Patricia McCormick

Cut is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Callie who is sent to a therapeutic residential treatment facility when her cutting addiction is discovered. The book chronicles her sessions with her therapist, the interactions she has with the other girls in her group, and her thoughts and feelings about her family and home life. The story is told in the first-person, present tense, which I thought was perfect for this novel.

My favorite line from the book is on page 125:

“I may not want to get rid of my scars,” I say finally. … “They tell a story,” I say.

I think this statement capture’s Callie’s inner strength perfectly, and the pages before it perfectly depict the inner turmoil of feelings that one can have towards one’s self-inflicted scars.

Patricia McCormick — as I said in my video — researched and wrote this novel for three years. It shows. She really knows her stuff. She didn’t just dig up facts about self-injury and then slap them down in the form of a story. She took what she had learned and wound them into a story that is so real, so beautiful, anyone who has ever struggled with self-injury will be able to identify with it and take away hope from it.

I give this novel two freaking thumbs up. Have you read it? What did you think about it?

It's time to make it happen

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I know I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, but when I saw that publisher PUSH holds novel publishing contests every year, I just had to check it out. I wasn’t even sure if they were still doing it, since I’d found out about it when I finished Cut by Patricia McCormick (it was on the very last page).

Turns out, the contest is only for students in grades 7-12. Even though I look pretty young for my age, I would not be able to pull that off. Or could I? ;)

That’s okay, though, because I already have my eyes on an agent that I am going to send Secondhand Mom to. And I plan on having Secondhand Mom finished and ready for editing by the end of February. Especially since I will be spending the first or second Saturday of the month — can’t remember which — stranded at Southern for about four hours. Southern, if you remember, is the university I sort of went to for a while. I am taking my little sister — who is about to graduate high school and is looking at colleges — up to SCSU so that she can take the essay exam to get into their Honors College. The whole process is going to take about four hours, and since I probably don’t have remote internet access anymore since I’ve withdrawn, I am going to be unable to work on any projects for my clients. Which means I need to take advantage of that by bunkering down in my favorite campus lounge (which is stocked with Starbucks coffee, by the way), cracking open my laptop, and writing (almost1) straight through those four hours.

When I was enrolled at Southern, I enjoyed nothing more than hanging out in that lounge and working on my outlines for this novel. The atmosphere of it was just perfect for writing. I did a little pre-writing, too, and wished that I could spend my time there actually writing my novel as opposed to preparing for NaNoWriMo 2009 or doing homework for class3.

Where was I4?

Anyway, I will finish this novel by the end of February, and then I will forceask one of my writers’ group mates to help edit, and then I will edit this sucker, and then I absofuckinglutely will send it off to said designated agent.

This book is going to see the shelves of Barnes & Noble, and nothing — not depression, not work, not the fear of rejection — is going to stand in my way5.

1 I should probably take bathroom breaks, a lunch break, and maybe a cigarette break if I am still smoking2 at that point.

2 I am now one of those on again, off again smokers I once hatedenvied so much when I was a full-time smoker.

3 I’ve come to realize that I enjoyed the environment of Southern more than I enjoyed the program I was in. That’s not to say that I didn’t love the kids. I loved them so, so much. I think about them all of the time, especially my Conner and my Lola. They were such cool kids. But I’ve discovered that the whole thing was a big spontaneous disaster waiting to happen; I should have thought about it harder before jumping in with both feet (and taking out loans). I’m thoroughly enjoying the consequences of that jump now, as I await my next loan statement and prepare to begin making monthly payments. Hoo-fucking-rah for me. I do miss going to SCSU, but I refuse to re-enroll until I’ve thought about it long and hard — haha, excuse me while I be immature and giggle over that — and before I can even think about it, I need to diagnose my mystery autoimmune disease. This, of course, is a post for another day.

4 I’m trying to keep all of my rambling, ADHD-byproduct thoughts organized here, but instead it’s only making me totally lose focus of what the hell I originally set out to write about.

5 Now if only I could quit talking about it and get writing.