In the first half of the fourth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone<\/i>, MY FEELINGS. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For talk of grief\/death, depression.\u00c2\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Whew, this is a difficult one. I admire how direct much of this was; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not easy to talk about or to write grief that lingers and consumes. People want their grief easy to package and define, categorizable and neat. They want people to be sad for a bit, and then bounce back with resilience. But what if you\u00c2\u00a0don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t?\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>What does it feel like when that sadness sticks around, when it starts to affect your day in negative ways, when that creates a snowball effect until you end up just like Dairine, unwilling and unable to just get out of bed each day?<\/p>\n
Depression is messy, point blank. Anyone who tells you otherwise might experience it differently, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never met anyone for whom depression was an easy thing. Oh, it manifests in all of us in different ways and for different reasons. Until Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother died, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think she ever\u00c2\u00a0had<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0depression, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing that this is one reason why this is so difficult for her. See, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had depression since I was a kid, and while I really, really need to see a therapist regularly, I have taken care of it myself. Not in the healthiest of ways, mind you, but I can make it through the day when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m in the midst of a crushing episode. Having my own business has helped motivate me \u00c2\u00a0when things get real rough because guess what BILLS HAVE TO BE PAID AND THEY DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T WAIT FOR MY DEPRESSION.<\/p>\n
Obviously that is a real shitty coping mechanism, but hey! I have only been able to afford therapy once in my life, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had to rely on self-care to keep my sanity on a plateau. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a part of me, then, that is just\u00c2\u00a0thrilled<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0that Nita has someone to talk to who isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t connected to all of this, someone who can give her perspective, advice, and get her to talk about things she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t with other people. Sometimes, when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m deep in an episode, I find that talking to people I know and love is actually the hardest. What if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re judging me? What if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m burdening them by relying on them too much for emotional support? What if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m\u00c2\u00a0too<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0vulnerable?<\/p>\n
And really, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the word I kept coming back to as I read Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s POV section at the start of this chapter: every single person in the Callahan family is so\u00c2\u00a0vulnerable<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0right now. Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bare to wake up on his own anymore, so Nita has taken to doing that for him. Dairine often refuses to take part in her day, staying home in bed. And what of Nita, who does a lot of the emotional labor to help out her younger sister and her father? She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s raw around the edges in this chapter, and it ached me to see this. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s felt so much in the past month or so that all her nerve endings are frayed and torn. So what does she feel instead?<\/p>\n
A perpetual numbness. A sense that, as she put it:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6there was some kind of thick skin between her and the world, muffling the way she knew she ought to feel about things\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what to do to get rid of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
THIS IS SO REAL, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s genuine and believable, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not an easy thing to pull off by any means. \u00c2\u00a0Everything here is uncomfortable, painful, and yet Duane never gets so bogged down in it that we feel hopeless. Sad, yes, but not impossible. Mr. Millman is a force for some of that positivity, but he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come off as cheesy here. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see more of him later in the book, too, because I enjoyed the scene he shared with Nita.<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also discuss the\u00c2\u00a0other<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0big conversation in the first half of this chapter. I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m being a bit repetitive here, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get enough of Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relationship with his parents. His mother experiences one of the more heartbreaking moments of this whole series: Ponch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mournful howling over what Darryl is going through. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a gut punch for sure, especially since we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve\u00c2\u00a0never<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0seen Ponch react like this before. Yet I was more drawn in by how\u00c2\u00a0real<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother felt as she asked him about the dangers of wizardry. I got a real sense of who she is as a mother. Her concerns are rooted in her fear that she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t truly understand what her son does and that if she\u00c2\u00a0did<\/i>, she wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like what she learned.<\/p>\n
Take the story he tells her about the Spinies. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more or less about a child wizard dying in service to a species that normally\u00c2\u00a0ate<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0creatures like her. Her initial takeaway is age: Why are kids offered wizardry so young if they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fully understand what it means to be a wizard? How can they comprehend that they might die young when death doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean the same thing as it does to an adult?<\/p>\n
I loved Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s answer. Because maybe he really\u00c2\u00a0didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0know what he was getting into, but you know what? He understands it now, and he\u00c2\u00a0still<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0wants to be a wizard. The risks and the threats haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t changed that desire in him. And she gets it! She understands why her son is risking his life for people all over the universe.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pretty cool thing, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UXIdVpsly54<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b>
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first half of the fourth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone, MY FEELINGS. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[523,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-wizard-alone","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}