Such a parallel came to mind when Parkland activist Cameron Kasky shared that Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School was putting on a production of the musical Spring Awakening. Based on a late 1800s play of the same name, Spring Awakening is about teenagers revolting against the parents and teachers who failed to teach them about sex, leaving them confused, unsafe, and responsible for learning everything themselves. The play’s co-writer Duncan Sheik told the New Yorker,

“It was a real act of resistance, in 1891, when the angry young Frank Wedekind first penned his Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening). To this day, it remains the most scabrous indictment ever written of adulthood. Of parents, teachers, and a clergy so invested in their social prestige that they will sacrifice even their children to protect it. Perhaps only Wedekind could have imagined, among this ‘Columbine generation,’ a young hero, a Melchior, like Cameron Kasky, like Emma González, like Ryan Deitsch, capable of standing so strong, of speaking the bald truth to the ever-collected, if contorted, face of power. I know I am profoundly affected to hear, in their simple demands, the play’s fierce original spirit: ‘Why did you let them? You broke it. Fix it.’”

That led me to revisit the poem “This Be the Verse” by Philip Larkin. Two years ago, I thought it was just dark and true, and now it actually brings me comfort: The recommendation that we all just stop reproducing and kill ourselves because it’s impossible not to fuck up your kid or be fucked up yourself is so heinous that you realize you must find some way to live with all the fucked up-ness. That living with it is better than the alternative.

That’s what the author Edward St. Aubyn tried to find a way to do with the Patrick Melrose series, throughout which his autobiographical stand-in reflects on and continues to suffer from the abuse he endured as a child. In At Last, Patrick declares his dad unworthy of forgiveness, but aches to feel less tortured by the thought of his dad’s existence. He talks with a friend about freeing himself without making a gesture of exoneration:

“‘There’s no point in staying stuck,’ Patrick agreed. ‘But there’s even less point in pretending to be free. I feel on the verge of a great transformation, which may be as simple as becoming interested in other things. […] I thought of him this evening without thinking about his influence on me, just as a tired old man who’d fucked up his life, wheezing away his last years in that faded blue shirt he wore in the summer. I pictured him sitting in the courtyard of that horrible house, doing The Times’ crossword, and he struck me as more pathetic and more ordinary, and in the end less worthy of attention.’”

Patrick may be freed by compassion that verges on pity, and by “becoming interested in other things”—getting bored of the narrative. Exhausting it and moving on.

The playwright Edward Albee seemed to come to terms with his mother through writing—not by trying to come to terms, but by trying to create a strong work of fiction. A good play necessitates fleshed-out characters, which may allow for more objectivity than if you were just telling someone about a horrible person you hate. You take the narrative into your own hands, but your hands are forced to be more creative than they would be in a pure retelling. From Albee’s introduction to his play Three Tall Women:

“No, it was not a revenge piece I was after, and I was not interested in ‘coming to terms’ with my feelings toward [my mother]. I knew my feelings, I thought they were pretty much on the mark, and knew that I would not move much beyond the grudging respect I’d slowly developed for her. I was not seeking self-catharsis, in other words.
I realized then that what I wanted to do was write as objective a play as I could about a fictional character who resembled in every way, in every event, someone I had known very, very well. And it was only when I invented, when I translated fact intact into fiction, that I was aware I would be able to be accurate without prejudice, objective without the distortive folly of ‘interpretation.’
I did not cry and gnash my teeth as I put this woman down on paper. I cannot recall suffering either with her or because of her as I wrote her. I recall being very interested in what I was doing—fascinated by the horror and sadness I was (re)creating.”

I don’t know what I’m saying. Everyone write a book? That’s not helpful. But writing—or talking, or finding these parallels—is a form of processing. Seeing your experience in another person, or a book, or what have you, also allows you to see a future-you who will eventually be less burdened by these initial pangs of sorrow. They help to glimpse a time when, beyond high school or college or your immediate surroundings, your life will be graced by people whom you’ll trust without having to think about it. You’ll have already tried being vulnerable in enough of the wrong places, with enough of the wrong people. You’ll have seen yourself well enough to know if another person is really seeing you, too.

Sometimes you’ll be hyper-aware that it’s happening, like being in awe of what a filmmaker can make real despite the obstacles of constructed circumstance. And then sometimes it’ll feel as natural as a movie that makes you forget those obstacles even exist.

Please learn about sending us your reflections on Growing Pains here, and if you’re nearing the end of the school year, YAY! Congrats! We’ll be talking about those specific pains this month, too. But mostly: Yay!!!

Love,
Tavi