What Happened to Goodbye?

  So I haven't written in a while, and of course today's post, the first in over a week, is one that hits close to home. Last Tuesday Sarah Dessen, one of my favorite authors since I was probably 14 came out with a new book called 'What Happened to Goodbye' and I just started reading it yesterday. If you haven't read a Sarah Dessen novel before you are missing out, but if you have you probably know she generally writes young adult novels about young girls who are caught at a cross-roads in their life. I think that being a young adult myself and having been at several cross-roads so far in my life it has been easy to relate to the characters that Dessen has written about, and no more so then her most recent character Mclean. From the first couple pages I have read, being sucked into the life of 18 year old Mclean I knew that this particular novel by Dessen was going hit close to home. 

In the story Mclean moves around from town to town with her restaurant consultant father after her mother gets involved in an affair with a famous basketball coach. In each place Mclean re-invents herself, with a new name and interests never willing to form any new attachments, until she moves to Lakeview where she falls into friendship and love- The parts in the book that tug at me the most are the ones when Mclean is battling with herself on whether to forgive her mother for tearing their family apart. Some parts Mclean is willing to forgive her mother and try to remember the way things were in the past, only to realize that these were long gone memories that she would never be able to have again. Other parts she is angry with her mother and wants nothing more then to have space from a mother who wants nothing else but to be apart of her life, and have her apart of her 'new' life. 

I felt a pang of remorse reading these parts cause I have been in the same situation and I know how it feels to battle with yourself over something so confusing. When I was 17 my parents got a divorce because of an affair and I didn't know how to re-act. I was so angry at one parent for doing something so hurtful and was siding with other parent because I knew how bad they were hurting cause I was feeling the same way. It was all confusing because I was close to both, my mother for obvious mother-daughter bonds and my father for the connection we had with sports. It was a different relationship with both and I felt it was all lost because of a decision somebody made. I didn't know what to feel, I wanted to be angry at my father for being so selfish and never considering what us kids were feeling but at the same time he was my father and I wanted him close by and wanted to still be able to do the things we did together. I felt like I was being riped down the middle and didn't know which way to go. Its been several years and I still haven't totally been able to come to grip with what has happened. My father and I didn't talk for a long time and even talking now is guarded because I don't know if I can entirely forgive him for what happened. Which is the confusing part, I want to go there but at the same time I feel like I would be hurting my mother. So when this story line became present in ' What happened to Goodbye' I knew it was going to be one of the better Dessen novels. I'm only about half way through and still have a ways to go but I think it will turn out good. 

So that's all for now.