Unleashed Speaks on Please Stop Trying to Leave Me

 

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Title: Please Stop Trying to Leave Me
Author: Alana Saab
Genre(s): Literary Fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction
Format: Paperback
Source: Borrowed from the local library

Blurb

While god is sending her signs through Instagram and Spotify demanding she break up with her girlfriend, Norma meets with a new therapist for one reason: she really needs to write again. With only one chapter missing in her manuscript, Norma is desperate to know if she needs to leave her girlfriend in order to write The Last Story. The new therapist diagnoses Norma with Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder, but Norma isn’t having it. It’s just Oblivion.

Haunted by SSRI side effects and life becoming less hazily fictional by the day, Norma has never felt crazier. Does anyone else see the world’s poorly crafted plotline? Like, who even wrote this story? Norma begins sharing her manuscript with her therapist, hoping to connect the dissociative dots once and for all—or at least enough so that Google ads stop giving her panic attacks. But soon Norma is questioning everything she’s ever believed about life, writing, and love. 

And then there’s Norma’s girlfriend, the one with a crack of light in her eyes. Could she be Oblivion’s antagonist, the manuscript’s savior? Or is she just a human? 

Told alternately through Norma's barely fictional fiction and her crackling stream of consciousness, Please Stop Trying To Leave Me is an honest, comedic, horrifying, and heart-wrenching story about existing in today’s world, challenging all we’ve been taught about the distance between fiction and reality, sanity and insanity, mental illness and healing.

Introduction: How This Book Was Selected

When I was a member of The Review Board, the work I was given to review was based mainly on the order placed in the queue. Now that The Review Board has retired and I review at leisure, the selection process is different.

As tempting as it is to lean toward "tried and true"— authors whose works I've always loved and rarely have a disappointing reading experience — I wanted to challenge myself to explore new authors and genres. I desired books whose covers, short introductions, and topics spoke to me.

Please Stop Trying to Leave Me was a book that did all three.

Before proceeding, please STOP here if any of these apply to you:

1. Those who are used to the traditional structure of a novel.
   If you are a stickler for traditional structural visuals or clear indications of dialog, this work may be too distracting. Reason: you may be overly consumed with making mental modifications which could deter you from your enjoyment of the novel.
2. Those who are not fans of stream-of-consciousness writing.
   Hopefully, this is self-explanatory. If it isn't, click →here.
3. Those who have difficulty reading fiction that discusses trauma, mental health, or the LGBTQ+ community.
   There are sprinkles of dry humor, but all in all, the subject matter is heavy. No harm, no foul, if you decide NOT to read this review. Not all of my book reviews will cover serious topics, so if you want to wait for those, that's fine.

Unleashed Speaks

I am unsure where to start my thoughts. Normally, I would have a streamlined approach to my reviews, but this is unlike any novel I have read before. Therefore, the normal would not work when speaking about the abnormal.

As someone who also writes (Author Queen of Spades), I pull some components from fragments of my own life while others are from experiences and imagination. There are moments when the reader of my poetry or short stories may fail to decipher what elements are fiction versus what is not.

Please Stop Trying to Leave Me blurs these lines fantastically.

Just as Norma is processing her thoughts while working through oblivion, I, as a reader, am also processing different emotions. There were sprinkles of dry humor and wordplay, which I appreciated (since I also utilize wordplay for humor). This broke the tone of Please Stop Trying to Leave Me at certain points, but not enough to escape the underlying premises — the challenges Norma faced and the pain beneath.

I have been on both sides. I have a mental illness, and I have been a partner to someone who had several mental illnesses.

In my situation, my partner was misdiagnosed, but the doctors did not realize it because one aspect (depression) presented itself. It was only when the mania surfaced that they got my companion's diagnosis correct.

Trying to be there for my companion while going through my own mental illness was very challenging. I empathized with Norma's partner, and like Norma's partner, stuck by my companion's side as mania, depression, cutting episodes, unaliving attempts, and everything in between. It got to a point where the type of day I had was dependent on my partner's moods.

With the help of her new therapist Dr. Raya, Norma has the breakthrough that those who know others who have mental illness should realize.

Mental illness is not something that is magically cured.

However, it can be managed if one has the proper tools.

Norma needed medication and therapy.

I was on the medication and therapy route for a while, but because each medication took me away from my first love (writing), I made the decision to wean myself off my medication. For me, writing serves a dual purpose. Not only is it my passion but it has been my catharsis for as early as I can remember.

Norma also mirrored the importance of choosing the right therapist for one's needs. The wrong client-therapist match can leave a person at a standstill or amplify a person's condition. Norma's old therapist went along with the oblivion instead of presenting a challenge to oblivion and assisting Norma in new ways of thinking and addressing issues.

I am torn about the ending. The ending was not bad, but it was not what I was expecting. The segment before "The End" was the end for me. I was surprised there were more pages (I tend not to look ahead to see how many pages are in a book).

Did I understand the ending's purpose? Overall, I did.

Rating

#ICanWorkWithThat

Please Stop Trying to Leave Me is a complex, chaotic novel but necessary fiction in the LGBTQ+ and mental health space. This novel represents the honest conversations we must have about difficult (and still taboo) topics.

Unleashed Speaks on What Happened to You?

 

Audible

Title: What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
Authors: Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry
Genre: Self-Help
Format: Audiobook
Source: Borrowed from Library (https://libbyapp.com)

Abbreviated Summary

Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person? When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question.

Through deeply personal conversations, Opray Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking "What's wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?"

Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. In conversations throughout the audiobook, she and Dr. Perry focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It's a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it's one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future — opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.

Unleashed Speaks

When listening to this audiobook, it had the ambiance of Oprah Winfrey's show Super Soul Sunday. On Super Soul Sunday, Oprah Winfrey invited a guest to sit and chat with her. The conversation would be an exchange of ideas, experiences, and enlightenment.

This is not a self-help book that focuses on outlining the steps, as Iyanla Vanzant would say, "to do your work". It is more causal than that.

Dr. Bruce Perry shares his knowledge from a scientific perspective and applies it to how trauma impacts us through his experience with patients. Oprah Winfrey implements her own complex stories of abuse. Together, they have conversations where education and enlightenment are reached.

I could relate to Oprah Winfrey's complicated relationship with her mother. Although Oprah's experience dealt with physical abuse, I battled with feelings of abandonment and neglect as well as holding on to a dream of a deep mother-daughter bond that would never come to pass. In the end. like Oprah, I had to accept that there were limits to my mother's capabilities, and like Oprah, I had to be okay with it.

The cadence of Bruce and Oprah's voices made the audiobook easy to work with. Oprah's delivery was more like a storyteller (which I resonate with more) while Bruce's delivery was more matter-of-fact yet still engaging.

Because I've read other self-help books in the past on tackling trauma, I can't say that I've learned anything new in terms of the fundamentals. However, what I learned involved changing my perspective and different ways to assist others around me who are going through traumatic events.

Summary

This is recommended for those who want assistance with how to handle trauma without the heftiness that traditional self-help work can sometimes encompass.

This is also recommended for a loved one who needs tips on how to best be there for someone who is going through trauma.

Although this audiobook did include some exercises in .pdf form, I was unable to utilize them since I borrowed the audio (as opposed to making a purchase).

Rating

#ICanWorkWithThat