Friday, November 20, 2009

Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

              WITHOUT WARNING
Sometimes   
           You're traveling
           a highway, the only road 
           you've ever known,
           and wham! A semi
           comes from nowhere
           and rolls right over you.
Sometimes
           you don't wake up.
           But if you happen
           to, you know things
           will never be
           the same.
Sometimes
           thats not
           so bad.
Sometimes
           lives intersect,
           no rhyme, no reason,
           except, perhaps,
           for a passing semi.


              TRIAD
Three
           separate highways
           intersect at a place
           no reasonable person
           would ever want to go.
Three
           lives that would have
           been cut short, if not
           for hasty interventions
           by loved ones. Or Fate,
Three
           people, with nothing
           at all in common 
           except age, proximity,
           and a wish to die.
Three 
           tapestries, tattered
           at the edges and come
           unwoven to reveal
           a single mutual thread.


           THE THREAD
Wish
           you could turn off
           the questions, turn
           off the voices,
           turn off all around.
Yearn 
           to close out
           the ugliness, close
           out the filthiness,
           close out all light.
Long
           to cast away 
           yesterday, cast
           away memory,
           cast away all jeopardy.
Pray
           you could somehow stop
           the uncertainty, somehow
           stop the loathing,
           somehow stop the pain.
Act
           on your impulse,
           swallow the bottle,
           cut a little deeper,
           put the fun to your chest.


This is from the beginning of the book Impulse 
by Ellen Hopkins which is one of my favorite 
books, As you start reading it you get intrigued 
and don't want to put the book down. You fall in 
love with the characters even though they are 
suicidal with many problems behind it you get 
to know them and get in their minds and see a 
side of them no one else sees.   


Conner ( rich kid, a product of the elite society, and his attempt to shoot himself in the chest has his parents more concerned about what the neighbors will think rather than what is troubling their sonTony (molested by one of his mother's many boyfriends until he was driven to a desperate act of violence that landed him six years in juvenile lockup at the tender age of eight, where he was continually sodomized by other males. Tony plays up his gayness... but there's a part of him he discovers through the course of the novel that he had never had the opportunity to explore before. He's only ever loved one person, and when that person died, Tony found himself homeless on the streets. His chosen method of taking a final exit was a cocktail of booze and pills) and Vanessa (Self-diagnosed with the same bipolar disorder she inherited from her mother, Vanessa cuts herself to balance her moods. When her boyfriend breaks things off with her, she cuts... and cuts and cuts until her left wrist is just left danglingall patients at the Aspen Springs facility. They're all there for the same reason that most of the other teens are: they all tried to kill themselves and connect with one another in a way they never have with their parents or anyone else in their lives.





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