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Push Me, Pull Me
Fourteen-year-old Cathy's world falls apart after Bob, her mother's new boyfriend, rapes her, and she feels she has nowhere to turn.
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 8, 2021
"Being on your own makes the sun cold, the cold colder."
"You can drown in your own weakness.... it makes you feel so silly, like your bones could snap if someone got too close."
Trigger warning on this book and review for rape and child sexual abuse.
I wish I'd read this book when I was younger. I needed something like this.
As someone who was abused as a child and acted out because of it, so angry and confused and sad, this book really made me feel seen and heard. It perfectly encapsulates the feelings of anger towards everyone and needing to escape, and the fear of telling anyone or anyone finding out.
Fourteen year old Cathy is raped by her mum's boyfriend.
"This man, from nowhere, just walks in, takes my mother from me, takes me from myself." That's the feeling of helplessness and loss of control when you're abused, especially when you're young.
"We could make another place, away from here, one where we could run at any time. I couldn't wait for all those years to pass before escaping." This honestly made me cry because I still feel like that to this day. The feeling of being trapped around painful memories, especially when you're young and it's so confusing.
"All the people and places started to make me feel ill. So ill that I couldn't tell the difference between ill and ordinary, it was all one, muddled together."
"The rest of the world disown you, like you stink. Like you're fading out of yourself and into someone horrid who you don't like and don't want to be."
This book is so short but so powerful. I feel like it was written for me, for all the kids that were like me, that had no choice but to act out when betrayed by people we trusted. I expected the end to be Cathy telling someone, but it doesn't work like that. It takes strength, and we watch Cathy get stronger as she comes to terms with what happens. This book brings up slut shaming and victim blaming because it happens in reality, but it thankfully says that victims of abuse are never at fault. This book doesn't glamourise abuse and the aftermath. It shows it raw and real, and doesn't make everything perfect once it's over. It shows healing takes time.
"You can drown in your own weakness.... it makes you feel so silly, like your bones could snap if someone got too close."
Trigger warning on this book and review for rape and child sexual abuse.
I wish I'd read this book when I was younger. I needed something like this.
As someone who was abused as a child and acted out because of it, so angry and confused and sad, this book really made me feel seen and heard. It perfectly encapsulates the feelings of anger towards everyone and needing to escape, and the fear of telling anyone or anyone finding out.
Fourteen year old Cathy is raped by her mum's boyfriend.
"This man, from nowhere, just walks in, takes my mother from me, takes me from myself." That's the feeling of helplessness and loss of control when you're abused, especially when you're young.
"We could make another place, away from here, one where we could run at any time. I couldn't wait for all those years to pass before escaping." This honestly made me cry because I still feel like that to this day. The feeling of being trapped around painful memories, especially when you're young and it's so confusing.
"All the people and places started to make me feel ill. So ill that I couldn't tell the difference between ill and ordinary, it was all one, muddled together."
"The rest of the world disown you, like you stink. Like you're fading out of yourself and into someone horrid who you don't like and don't want to be."
This book is so short but so powerful. I feel like it was written for me, for all the kids that were like me, that had no choice but to act out when betrayed by people we trusted. I expected the end to be Cathy telling someone, but it doesn't work like that. It takes strength, and we watch Cathy get stronger as she comes to terms with what happens. This book brings up slut shaming and victim blaming because it happens in reality, but it thankfully says that victims of abuse are never at fault. This book doesn't glamourise abuse and the aftermath. It shows it raw and real, and doesn't make everything perfect once it's over. It shows healing takes time.
October 10, 2023
Out of print and hard to find. But The Internet Archive has scans:
https://archive.org/details/pushmepul...
(I turned them into an ebook, if anybody wants to read.)
https://archive.org/details/pushmepul...
(I turned them into an ebook, if anybody wants to read.)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews