Ladies and gentlemen of the void! It’s been a while since a good-ol’ book review, hasn’t it? I mean, part of it is because of life happening, which, yanno, happens. But part of it is because of something as simple as this: some books you gotta take your time with.
Enter Prozac Nation.
This lovely piece of nonfiction literature was a trip and a half. It features a girl who is unforgivingly and unapologetically set in who she is for better or, mostly, for worse. Her emotions are raw and ugly and so fucking real.
And I couldn’t help but see a little bit of myself in her.
And I hated it.
The book is a memoir of the young life of Elizabeth Wurtzel, who deals with long bouts of depression that is more often than not absolutely debilitating. Wurtzel doesn’t waste time trying to romanticize the disease. Instead, she gets right down to the dirty details of what makes depression such an awful invisible illness. She dives headfirst into the terrible things she does to those around her, and the equally terrible things those same people do to her.
Every person in the book is a double-edged sword. Just when you think you might start to like them, SWIGGITY SWOOSHY they slice everything you thought you knew about them away to reveal the monster underneath. There’s something to take away from that, I think.
Let me back up a little bit and explain. Wurtzel, whom I most identify with, has a knack for being what some would call ungrateful. Hell, you know what? Wurtzel didn’t sugar-coat a damn thing in this book, so why should I? I think she was ungrateful for a lot of the things handed to her. Her mom put her through college, and my student loan debt is envious of that. She was able to go to London for a few months, and the lack of funds I have is super envious of that. She got to work somewhere where she wrote for a living and screwed off over half the time, and my life choices are uber envious of that. Like, the fuck, you have so much going for you that people like me can only dream about; why exactly are you depressed again?
But know what? That’s some class-A depression right there. You have a mountain of good but all you can focus on is the grain of bad. Or you can’t focus on any of it at all. You just exist, and it’s pointless.
Double-edged sword. She is ungrateful, and that makes her unlikeable, but she knows she’s ungrateful, and that makes her relatable. I can relate to her so hard in all of her seemingly selfish actions and obsessive mind acrobatics.
ESPECIALLY the obsessive mind acrobatics.
At one point in the book, she gets herself a boyfriend. A real, bonafide boyfriend (haha jesus christ) who is more than a one night stand, who is more than a few week fling. She’s got him, and they go steady together, and when she falls she falls hard and fast. I can’t judge her for this, mostly out of being in a different but vastly similar situation a time or two. I used to blame it on being young and stupid, but as I’ve grown into an older, adultier me, I think it’s less to do with being young and more to do with holding onto that one glimmer of happiness so tight your knuckles pierce through the skin (what a fucking image, am I right?). When you live in the dark for so long, the moment you get a ray of sunshine you chase it down and embrace it until it snuffs out of existence entirely.
Anyway, so they are going steady for a bit, and she tells him all the reasons why he shouldn’t be with her, and he assures her he’s going nowhere. Same lie that’s been told a million times by billions of people, mind you. But he’s convinced her illness is a quirk or a phase or adorable or some other atrocity, and she’s convinced he’s going to leave her forever the moment he lets go of her hand (a slight exaggeration, but the point still follows). She does the crazy girlfriend bit. You know the kind I’m talking about. Calling at all hours, showing up unexpectedly under the guise of surprise but everyone knows it’s because she just wants to keep tabs on him, getting lost in a whirlwind of negative thoughts about him and herself. It’s crazy. She knows she’s acting crazy. But the whole thing is compulsion; she just can’t stop herself.
I can relate to the same degree of obsessive compulsive behavior. Like I said, different situation, but same general idea. High school was a lonely, confusing time for me, and so I latched onto my best friend like she was a lifeline. At the time, I think she was more mine than I hers, and I don’t think it had much to do with her not liking me and more to do with I was smothering her. I won’t go into specifics on that, but I will say that one particularly bad day when I was left alone with my thoughts and my mind went dark, I called her house at least twelve times. This was before everyone had cell phones, so it was the landline, and her parents were home. A few times, her mother picked up, and assured me she would have her call me just as soon as she woke up. But another hour would go by, and I’d ring the line again, and again, and again. It was stupid. It was crazy. I knew it was crazy. But I kept doing it anyway.
Mental health is kind of funny that way.
Prozac Nation was an all around good book, but one that required lots of breaks in between the pages. That has nothing to do with the readability of it I don’t think. It all flowed well, and it held my interest from the first page to the last. I can only handle so much truth in one sitting. Overall, I loved it. It’s the best book about depression I’ve read to date. It gets a solid 10/10 for me.
So, question time: Have you ever read a book you had to put down because it was too close to home?
Manda Kay Writes 