*Image Snatched from Lifeless-Silence on DeviantArt.com*
The YA stories I love to read are full of romance, and adventure, and tingly angst. But I was reminded this week of the darker side of the YA experience: hopelessness.
That gut-wrenching misery where explaining why you're upset does nothing but produce more tears and you cry until your eyes ache.
The feeling like the world may be better off without you and anyone who would miss you would get over it soon enough.
The simultaneous urge to push everyone away and pull them in as tight as you can at the same time, because you need them and don't want them all at once.
And after the tears are gone, and the hopelessness has been washed away by a good cry, the clouds lift and light slowly creeps its way back in.
It's that emotional volatility that reminds me so much of the YA experience. Maybe it's just me, or maybe I don't read enough contemporary YA, but I don't remember being as strong as the characters I read about these days. I could break, dissolve, disappear into nothingness, only to reemerge the next day like a Phoenix reborn.
Anyone else have those memories they'd like to share? Today's catharsis day on The Daily Harrell. :)
