We’re All Bizarre
Emilio Estevez’s character in The Breakfast Club says, at one point in the movie, that “We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.”
I watched the movie again last night and when I heard him say this, I instantly thought of the characters in my latest novel, Tattered Butterfly Wings. TBW is about a group of teens who end up in Merryhaven, a home for troubled teenagers. Marcus, who became depressed after the death of his twin brother, has tried to commit suicide several times. Petey, who never felt like he belonged anywhere, has resorted to cutting himself to deal with the pain of his existence. Glory, who was molested by her mother’s boyfriend, deals with her feelings by journaling about them. She also writes poetry. But that creative outlet is not enough to prevent the ultimate blow-up. Then, there’s little Joseph, though small in stature, he is a long-time member of a gang. After his older brother was killed, Joseph’s dad forced him into the gang life. These teenagers like all the other teens at Merryhaven are only trying to learn how to survive the circumstances of their life that makes life seem unbearable.
Before writing this novel, I did some research, but I didn’t feel compelled to do a whole lot of research. I’d already done it, as a teacher, just by listening to my students as they talked. Over the years, I have heard more than my share of stories that reveal a deep level of depression and sadness that dwells within a lot of my students. There was the girl whose father was burned alive in a car (wrote about in earlier post), the young man whose mother was a drug addict and she died while using drugs one day (her family believed the dealer had slipped something in her drugs), the many young girls who have been molested by either their mother’s boyfriend or some other person in the family, the kid who cut himself because people made fun of him at school and he was shuffled between families, feeling that none of them really wanted him around, and the young men who have been kicked out of the house because it was what their mothers’ boyfriends wanted.
With the issues many kids deal with today, it’s no wonder many are depressed or slip into depressed-type states.
The stories aren’t just in my classroom either. With depression being a major health issue with teens today and first symptoms showing up as early as fourteen years old, this is an issue that needs to be addressed. That’s what I tried to do with Tattered Butterfly Wings. I wanted to get people thinking about and trying to understand what teens today are facing.
This is not an issue that can continue to be swept underneath the rug. Think: Andrea Yates who drowned her kids, Susan Smith who killed her two young sons, and then there’s one of the more recent cases involving Julie Schenecker who murdered her two teenaged children. One story that emerged following the murders claimed Schenecker murdered her children to keep them from suffering from mental illness. Other stories focus more on the mother’s alleged mental illness. Apparently, she struggled with depression and bipolar disorder.
More and more people are being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. More of our children are being diagnosed with mental illness and other behavior disorders. I witness the effects every day and that’s enough for me to know that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. Tattered Butterfly Wings is a novel that explores the topic of behavioral disorders by focusing on the teenagers who suffer from them, from the decisions they make to the things they do just to try to keep from being overtaken by their illness. I purposely chose not to focus on medications that are usually prescribed and the effects of those. I wanted to show them as real people, young people struggling with issues that are out of their control and issues that bear down heavily on them. You can read a sample of the book here (or order the book and read the entire thing):http://www.amazon.com/Tattered-Butterfly-Wings-Rosalind-Guy/dp/1494831457/ref=la_B00BGH5F88_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400952319&sr=1-1
Destruction
Gleamed in her
Eyes, like the slicing
Side of a hunting knife.
It was
Obvious her gaze
Was looking for a
Victim to slice apart.
No one
Could understand
How her heart was breaking
Or the choices she was making
All they could see was the
Destruction that gleamed
In her eyes.
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
