I think everyone
wants to believe that the heart once broken can be healed again. As vulnerable
as we are to pain, we have to believe that otherwise what is the point in
trying again. Why would we bother looking for love once we’ve lost it, or been
wounded/broken by someone who was supposed to love us?
I believe as readers
and writers we gravitate towards this theme in books because there is something
life-affirming about knowing there is something or someone waiting for us at
the end of heartbreak. Like a modern fairytale, mending the broken heart is a
trope that has resonance in the real world.
In my recent release,
DEAR CASSIE, Cassie goes through something pretty horrific at the hands of a
boyfriend and it has closed her off from being able to trust anyone. One of the
ways she learns to trust again is by learning to love again. I think this is
key, learning to love again, not having someone love her. I wrote it
that way purposely because I wanted it to be clear that her falling in love
with someone new was a choice she was making.
Here's the thing,
I've gotten some reviews, some not all, that say that she should have been able
to get over her trauma without help from a boy. I believe this statement and I
agree with it and so it made me wonder, how do you write a story like this and
give your broken female the appearance of strength if she ends up with the boy?
Would Cassie choosing to be alone have made her seem stronger? Is that even
realistic?
As a teen who had my
own traumatic experience at the hands of an ex-boyfriend, very different from
Cassie's but just as life-altering, I personally chose instead to be with
everyone. That was what being raped by my ex-boyfriend did to me, it made me
crave companionship and sex from anywhere I could get it. I was broken like
Cassie, but dealt with it in the complete opposite way. I wondered if I had
written her this way, if some readers would have had the same complaint.
Cassie for the first
75% of the book pushes everyone including girls and women away. It isn’t just
about keeping boys out or letting boys in. She deals with her trauma by closing
herself off, by putting up walls. Her choosing to let someone in isn't about
him being a boy. It isn't about being rescued. It's about her starting to
believe she deserves to be loved, to let people in again, boy or girl. That was
my intention anyway.
I suppose in some
ways my acting out with boys was the same as Cassie’s walls. I was letting them
in, but only sexually, emotionally my barricades were up. By being with them in
a physical way, by making it my choice
I suppose I was able to take any power away from them. I was able to decide not
to be hurt.
That was what Cassie was doing too and her opening up to someone emotionally was all about illustrating her growth. It was not about being swept off her feet, or saved by some guy. At least that was not what I intended when I wrote it.
I'm not sure what reaction is more authentic? Stronger? I'm not sure it matters. What does matter, or did matter to me was showing that someone can get past heartbreak, past a trauma and be able to let people in again. Whether that's strong or weak, I don't know. I just think it's human.
~Lisa Burstein

What if the last place you should fall in love is the first place that you do?
You’d think getting sent to Turning Pines Wilderness Camp for a month-long rehabilitation “retreat” and being forced to re-live it in this journal would be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
You’d be wrong.
There’s the reason I was sent to Turning Pines in the first place: I got arrested. On prom night. With my two best friends, who I haven’t talked to since and probably never will again. And then there’s the real reason I was sent here. The thing I can’t talk about with the guy I can’t even think about.
What if the moment you’ve closed yourself off is the moment you start to break open?
But there’s this guy here. Ben. And the more I swear he won’t—he can’t—the deeper under my skin he’s getting. After the thing that happened, I promised I’d never fall for another boy’s lies.
And yet I can’t help but wonder…what if?
2 comments:
Lisa,
What a tragic and yet inspiring story. We all end up judging in some way or another. We all think people act a certain way for a reason. What we don't realize is that we're almost always wrong.
I disagree with people who assume a boy is rescuing a girl because she ends up with him in the end. That's ridiculous! I believe wholeheartedly that girls should be strong and stand up for themselves, but that doesn't mean they should stand alone. That's so ridiculous. If you're bounding and rebounding from one guy to another, it's clear that there's a problem, but if you happen to fall in love with a boy during a rough patch, that just shows that the heart can remain open, and we can learn to love again. That's life. And like you said, it's "human". Even when we are hurt the most, there's a part--sometimes extremely small, but still there--that want to love. Wants to believe in love.
That's the story.
Your book sounds amazing, and I'm definitely going to read it. Your personal story is horrific and heartbreaking, but, you made the choices that you felt would safeguard your heart, and so they must have been the right choices for you at the time. Would we go back and change our decisions, knowing what we know now? Maybe. But, the question would remain...would we be different people living different lives now? Every choice takes us in a different direction.
Yours took you to the direction you were meant to take.
Great post! Thanks for visiting with us!
Thanks for posting with us, Lisa. I'm with you. We shouldn't police how someone recovers from heartbreak. It's the recovery itself that matters.
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