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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
My sister, the firstborn, once told me that sometimes she wished we had "scars to show for it." Her whole childhood, she said, she prayed for a visible injury. "So that people could tell." What she meant to say was so that it would be undeniable: there would be hard proof that our mother did hurt us in some way. Instead, there were stretches of silence across dinner tables, one-sided outbursts, insults bitten off the tongue at the last minute, guilt, shame, and an all-encompassing humiliation that came about randomly, over little things, over nothing, for the rest of our lives.
It seems we had a mother like one of Jelinek's. Which is not to say that she was evil, not even that she didn't love us, just that she warped the world with that love, so much so that it became repressive as we grew bigger and bigger inside it. My mother created the world for me with her expectations and from there it is simple psychoanalysis. Mother's regime begets a lack of agency which begets a need for control which begets the desire to control anything and everything, even one's own pain, thinking: No matter if it's harmful. At least it's mine.
Control is nice, I understand Erika's neurotic discipline because I practice the same. It is because all that's good is Mother's, and so all that's left I have to make my own. I understand Erika's perversions, I have my own. I like substances. I like being the master of them. I like discovering the limit and standing a stone's throw away from it. I never overindulge. I stay safe because I have to return Mother's child to her in one piece at the end of the day, but while Mother is looking away, I can make her child do whatever I want, and I intend to have fun with it.
Control is nice, but it also habituates the mind to compartmentalize, to fracture the self in order to survive. The longer one grows up in pieces the harder it is to reinstate coherence, and the next thing you know, you have many conflicting, largely hollow, real and fake selves fighting to occupy one body, and the corollary: the body becomes alienated, nothing but a vacant vessel awaiting the debris of a mental tempest. Then it is easier to hurt oneself. Erika's sadomasochism was really a symptom of her disembodiment.
Control is nice, it stopped me, time and time again, from killing myself. For the wrong reason, sure. I did not want to reliquish my body to Mother once and for all, for her to posthumously animate and do whatever she wanted with it. I did not want Mother to win.
Control is nice, but it is insufficient. In the end, Erika realizes that what she wants is to be loved, not hurt, it was just hard to tell the difference in Mother's world. But love is not conjured by control, love only comes when it comes, all you can do is trust that it will. It causes a lot of anxiety but it is also liberating. In my Mother's world, I believed that I had to maintain a level of ability that kept requiring more of me in order for Mother to keep loving me the same. In the real world, there is no such requirement. No such standard. The people who love me love me because they love me. That's it. Trust requires much less, and what's more, the kind of love that trust begets is freeing, not repressive. This love opens up the world to all possibilities. When I moved out of the house for good, I moved out of my Mother's world. It has given me, finally, an appreciation of my life that isn't derived from her expectations. I do not kill myself today because I love being alive. I do not kill myself because I love being alive.
Control is nice, but trust is better.
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I just need to stop renting books on Libby for a bit. Need to hold the book I'm reading. I'll come back to this when I can get a physical loan. So far so good!
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
