how Girl, Interrupted completely wrecked me

 
So thanks to my friend's recommendation, I watched Girl, Interrupted (1999) over the weekend. She kept raving about Angelina Jolie's performance and told me that since I was so interested in psychological disorders I should watch the movie.

So I did and now I don't know if I'm still out of that funk. You know how some stories wreck you from inside you and stay inside you for days, maybe weeks or years? Girl, Interrupted messed me up and turned me into a complete emotional wreck.







Speaking of Misha, he had a tiny role in the movie too. I couldn't help it - I burst out laughing when I saw him try to seduce Winona Ryder.


Castiel, socially awkward since 1999.


What It's About

Susanna (played by the beautiful Winona Ryder) is admitted to Claymoore and diagnosed with borderline personality disorder after a failed suicide attempt.



There, she is thrown into a contained, isolated world far removed from reality as she struggles to make sense of her emotional turmoil. She meets a host of patients each with their own diagnoses - a pathological liar (Clea DuVall), a bulimic cutter (Brittany Murphy), a burn victim who behaves like a child (Elisabeth Moss), an anorexic (Angela Bettis) ...

And then there's Lisa (Angelina Jolie), charming, manipulative, rebellious, "dead inside" Lisa, a sociopath who has been in and out of Claymoore for eight years.



Lisa takes an interest in Susanna, who now lives in the ward vacated by Lisa's best friend who killed herself. Susanna finds Lisa exciting and magnetic, but is drawn into a downward spiral the more she hangs out with her.


How It Broke Me

The scene where ***spoiler alert (for the rare few who haven't watched it)*** Susanna found Daisy the bulimic cutter dead in the bathroom after she hung herself completely broke me. It just made me think about all the people out there who battle their inner demons daily, pushing away the voice in their head in an attempt to feel normal and be normal.

Some parts got close to the heart, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels alone or sad or like a failure sometimes. Some days, all you want to do is just curl up and be alone with your feelings, to cry yourself to sleep and let the debilitating self-doubt and sadness consume you. Other days, you just want them to go away and wish that you didn't feel anything.

But it's probably easier to give in to these emotions than dust them off and press on. The trick, I guess, is to keep moving and not stay stagnant with those feelings curdling around you and holding you back.


Favourite Quotes

"Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you, or me, amplified. If you ever told a lie, and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child, forever."

What Susanna wanted to say to Daisy (after Daisy killed herself):

"...I will never know what it was like to be her. But I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. You hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside."

Psychiatric nurse Valerie's advice to Susanna:

"I think what you've gotta do is put it down. Put it away. Put it in your notebook, but get it out of yourself. Away so you can't curl up with it anymore." 

I wanted to give Valerie a hug too after she said this!


Scene between Susanna and her psychiatrist:

Susanna: I'm ambivalent. In fact that's my new favorite word.
Dr. Wick: Do you know what that means, ambivalence?
Susanna: I don't care.
Dr. Wick: If it's your favorite word, I would've thought you would...
Susanna: It means I don't care. That's what it means.
Dr. Wick: On the contrary, Susanna. Ambivalence suggests strong feelings... in opposition. The prefix, as in "ambidextrous," means "both." The rest of it, in Latin, means "vigor." The word suggests that you are torn... between two opposing courses of action.
Susanna: Will I stay or will I go?
Dr. Wick: Am I sane... or, am I crazy?
Susanna: Those aren't courses of action.
Dr. Wick: They can be, dear - for some.
Susanna: Well, then - it's the wrong word.
Dr. Wick: No. I think it's perfect.

I love how this exchange shows how we are in control of what we think, what we allow ourselves to feel, and the reality we construct for ourselves.


Afterthoughts

Girl, Interrupted is the kind of story that you don't know whether to love or hate, like this little book called We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. On one hand, you love it because it is so well executed and emotional and moving; it opens up your eyes to the lives of mentally ill people and makes you see the blurred lines between what's real and what's in your head. On the other, it totally runs you over like a freight train and leaves you in pieces all over the ground; it worms a little too close into your heart for comfort, and I found myself sobbing during more than one scene towards the end.

I love stories that take you through a whole range of emotions. They make you feel so pathetically human, yet so wonderfully alive.

Okay, I think I've written my way out of this emotional fugue. Back to normal life!


Have you watched Girl, Interrupted? What are your thoughts about it, or of mental illnesses in general? I'd love to hear from you! Oh, and if you have any more recommendations on similar subject matter, feel free to share!

february's to-read list is not kind on the wallet

The wait is over! February is here!! Sorry, wallet. February's not a good month for you. Blame the publishers for coming out with a slew of titles I've been dying to get my hands on:


1. Red Queen, by Victoria Aveyard

I know I've gone on for too long about this book. But the concept! The premise! The conflict!



It would really suck if the book didn't live up to expectations, because it looks so delicious I could gobble it up right now. (I didn't read the seven teaser chapters because I want to read it all at one go, and not wait for weeks before reading the rest of the story.)




2. The Darkest Part of the Forest, by Holly Black

If you've read Holly Black's Curseworker series, you'll know how brilliant she is at weaving complex but un-confusing plots that keep you turning the pages. And this book looks as deliciously sinister as The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, with vicious faeries (also an obsession of mine that led to Blood Promise), gifted siblings, and a horned boy waking from a long, deep slumber to fight the fairies.






3. Monstrous, by MarcyKate Connolly

A girl born with a spiked tail and wings meant to save the girls in her town from their mysterious fate is spotted by a boy who leaves a red rose for her every evening.

 






4. Beastkeeper, by Cat Hellisen

A girl who grew up lonely and longing for magic and on the run learns the truth about what they're running from when her mother abandons them and her father transforms into something beastly. Best part is, she's cursed too, and can only break free of the curse when she falls in love. It's a slightly different take on the Beauty and the Beast story, since the protagonist is beast, so this should be good.



5. The Last Time We Say Goodbye, by Cynthia Hand

 

I'm not usually into tear-jerkers, but I've been in this mood ever since I started watching the Korean drama series, Pinocchio (the music! the romance! plus, the relationship between the protagonist and her cold, distant mother), and read Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, which is more heart-breaking than I had ever expected.




This is probably why No Room in Neverland is turning out way more emotionally intense than I had intended. I'm on page 185 now, by the way! Woohoo!

What's on your To-Read list for February? :0)

The 15 stages of book addiction

1. At first, you come across the book with the pretty cover and you're like

2. First chapter in and you're still like




3. But halfway through you become like




4. And then like




5. By the final chapter you're like



Even though you're like this




6. After you close the book you're like



And




7. You rush out to buy the hard copy even though you've already got the e-book.

8. You look for someone to fangirl with over the book, but it's like

9. But then you find a fellow fan at last and it's like




10. Later, you learn that the sequel is out and this becomes you




11. But then the sequel won't be out until next year and you're like




12. Finally, the sequel is here and you're like






13. You repeat stages 4 and 5, only this time you're more like this



And



And




14. And now that there's a final installment, you're like





But since it's the end, you're also like



15. So you ration your candy, so to speak




The above chronicle is all thanks to this mindblowing, awe-inspiring, wonderfully crafted epic trilogy:



(gif from Laini's blog)

Thank you, Laini, for sharing your beautiful writing with the world.

Monday moodlifters!

(I've decided to name all my posts on Monday "Monday moodlifters" because I'm a lazy ass who doesn't want to come up with new post titles every week. So if you have issue with the cheesy name, suck it. Kidding!)

So I came across this article on weird things that affect our dreams today. I don't know if it's all just a load of horse shit, but they do sound plausible. At least, we all know the stuff we're exposed to during the day gets processed by our pre-conscious mind and they manifest in completely bizarre ways when we're asleep.

Speaking of dreams, I had the weirdest dream last Saturday (I'm starting to see a pattern here - is Saturday the day when my circadian rhythm jumps out of whack?), and the emotions I experienced in it were so intense I woke up crying. No shit.

(It's funny. You may be sobbing your heart out in your dream, so hard that you feel like your chest and face might explode from all that emotion, but you wake up and find that you're only just tearing up. Like how you're screaming and shrieking in your dream, and you're actually just whimpering in waking.)

My dream might have to do with the book I just finished reading:

Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby

It's about a girl named Portia who was abandoned by her family at a home for girls during the Great Depression era. I generally avoid books set in depressing times because they're such downers (sorry!), but this one has a circus, a budding romance and is a coming-of-age story about a girl searching for her father.

Okay, that's a terrible summary. I think this blurb from Teen Librarian Toolbox does it more justice:

Portia has always grown up hearing the stories of her family, but when her family disappears there is no one left to care for her except for The Mister. The Mister runs the McGreavey Home for Wayward Girls and it is a place that you would do anything to escape if you could, perhaps even death.  When one of the girls in the home, her friend Caroline, does indeed take her life, the thought that she may be a murderer haunts her.  For a while Portia languishes at the home, biding her time and praying that her father will magically appear and rescue her, but when the circus caravan drives by and a card with all their routes on it falls out a window and glides slowly to the ground, she has a new plan. 

Portia jumps on a bright red bicycle and pedals to a new type of freedom, she hopes.  Her she stumbles upon The Wonder Show, a side show of circus freaks who caravan across the country and make a meager living based solely on their various oddities.  Tall men, short men, fat ladies and a woman with no arms who throws knives with deadly precision - they are now the only hope that Portia has of out running The Mister and trying to find the father she knows once loved the circus.  Portia knows it is only a matter of time before The Mister finds her, he is not the type of man to let someone get away. And Portia, more than anyone ever has, has upset The Mister.

Abandonment, optimism, flagging hope, It's right in line with the themes and emotions of Neverland. Plus, the pacing is tight and keeps you turning the pages, the characters are people you want to root for, there is an underlying sense of urgency and danger threaded throughout the story, and you find yourself hoping along with Portia for her father to find her.

Some beautiful quotes from the book:

Sometimes promises are even harder to keep than secrets. Promises are easily made - we toss them like coins bound for a fountain and leave them there, under the water, waiting to be retrieved.

And:

The ones who left (tapped at the edge of her memory), and the ones who were left behind, everyone in motion like startled birds, trying to find a place to land.

And:

There was always someone going and someone left behind. Portia had been both. She had enjoyed neither. But she knew that leaving a place was sometimes necessary, when you wouldn't breathe there anymore, when you weren't yourself because of it.

And finally:

Lives only begin once.  Stories are much more complicated.

I love it so much I NEED to own it.

Anyway, yes, the dream.

It involved a girl (let's call her Iris) being found by Mother, a no-nonsense but kind lady who founded the Academy for Wayward Teenage Girls. There, she got into trouble with the other girls, got framed, got kissed, got blamed for a murder, got expelled, and finally she realised that she had nowhere left to go. That the Academy, for all its failings and imperfections and hateful rules and hierarchy, was the only place she had come to count on. That part where Mother had to let her go was the part where Iris (or, okay, me, since I was Iris in the dream) struggled to hold in her tears and eventually broke down. I woke up to find my pillow soaked, although I wasn't choking on my tears the way Iris - or I - had been in the dream.





What, you don't get weird-ass dreams like that?

On the plus side, that dream made for some really good writing material. I might write something about it when I have the time, maybe a short story, if not a proper novel. I've been saving my dreams for ages, recording them in my notebook as detailed as I possibly can, hoping to one day discover them properly and fill up the missing pieces (you know how dreams can be a little hole-y).

Hmm. How shall I develop Iris's story? I already have a few ideas brewing, but am not sure how to work out the technicalities...

NO, JOYCE, NO. NOT NOW. NOW IS THE TIME FOR NEVERLAND!! DO NOT GET SIDETRACKED.

Okay, that's enough rambling for the day. Shall leave with a few lovely quotes and pictures, as usual.

John Green offers some very inspiring advice to aspiring writers:

Don’t make stuff because you want to make money — it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous — because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people — and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won’t — and if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn't change anything — because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but to the gift itself.

It's easy to lose sight of the reason you write. We want to be published so badly, want everything that comes along with being published. Book tours, book signings, brushing shoulders with YA superstars - *ahem* Laini Taylor *ahem* Sarah Dessen... Writing is such a lonely journey we want to see results sooner, if not at least have people to share the process with. To find someone(s) who's as excited and invested in the story as we are.

Which is why writing a novel requires SO MUCH patience and perseverance. You need stamina to see this shit through. To put yourself through this mental agony day after day until you hit The End.

But I guess I will try to see this journey - or, in fact, every journey, assuming I still have stories I want to write - for what it is. If not a gift, then at least a much-needed lesson in perseverance.


Laini Taylor on writing meaningful dialogue:

I think the trick to enjoying dialogue (which I think is the lifeblood of a book) is: to have characters who want things and are doing things. Then there's plenty to talk about, and their unique identities emerge more (for me) in the writing of dialogue than anywhere else. 

 WANTING and DOING. What do my characters WANT and DO?




Rose garden love!

F.R.I.E.N.D.S. love!

Reading love!

And finally,

Pretty boy love! 

Have a great week, everyone! ❤