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Written by Heather Demetrios As a young adult author, my goal when I sit down to write a story from a teen protagonist’s point of view is to present their experiences as authentically as possible, to try to get in the skin of this character and see the world the way she would in 2018. The vast major
Hear the interview here.
An infographic on dating violence
Check out the resources above for inspiration and help with getting out of your bad romance.
Gorgeous book selfie taken for the blog Dark Faerie Tales
When You’re The Friend
(Photo: Me with my besties Sarah Torna Roberts (left on big pic) and Melissa Wilmarth (center on big pic) over the years)
GUEST POST: Sarah Torna Roberts (aka my best friend) on being the friend when your bestie’s in a bad romance:
There’s one thing I’d like to get straight; I did not ever wear a polo shirt and khaki shorts in high school. While I freely admit that my fashion choices were mostly the result of copying those less challenged than myself in this department (or borrowing clothes from Heather), I wasn’t that bad. When I read through an early draft of Bad Romance, that was the only critique I had of how Heather chose to represent me in the character of Natalie. Upon voicing my discontent, she reminded me that Bad Romance is fiction. Oh. Right.
You see, while the story is made up and the characters have been changed enough to (undeservedly) protect the guilty, the spirit of the book is absolutely truthful to that season in our lives. Reading through the scenes, both happy and heartbreaking, I was transported back 16 years and felt every fear, moment of anger, grief, and yes, ecstasy as if it wasn’t that long ago at all.
While Heather lived through the trauma of abuse, I watched. Honestly, her portrayal of me in the book is far less pushy and annoying than I really was back then. I took every opportunity to rake her abuser over the coals, to beg her to break up with him. I even stopped being her friend for a while, I just couldn’t watch anymore. But that didn’t last long, because Heather and I have always been soul mates and even the immense power of that despicable boy couldn’t keep us apart for long.
In the end, I learned to be a little quieter in my disapproval, but tried really hard to make sure she knew I’d do anything she needed when the she was finally ready to break up with him. And I prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed. I couldn’t beg her anymore, so I begged God. I pleaded with God because I didn’t know what else to do and because I was scared. That’s the thing I remember the most from those years. I was so scared.
I always felt in my core that given enough time, he’d destroy her. That’s what abusers do. All the abusers I’ve known in my life have possessed a knack for finding women with immense talent and heart, and vulnerability. And then they systematically use their gifts and love and wounded places to tear them apart. That’s exactly what he did, but thank God, he didn’t get to finish the job.
Heather got brave. She ended it. And a few days later, when he showed up at my house where Heather and our other best friend were living for the summer, I answered the door with my foot pressed against the inside bottom edge in case he decided to push his luck. I told him he couldn’t see her. I told him he could give me whatever message he wanted, but he absolutely wasn’t going to talk to her.
Heather stood hidden around the corner and honestly, that was the moment I was most proud of her. Before that day, she would have given in and given him an inch before he took a mile. But she stayed put. She didn’t give in. She let me slam the door in his face.
I don’t have a lot of words of wisdom, I’m afraid. If you’re the Natalie who’s watching your beloved best friend continue to live in the clutches of an abuser, you’re in for a world of hurt. It’s hard to watch someone you love live that way when you know, even if they don’t, that they don’t deserve anything close to what they’re going through.
But you have to stay. You have to watch. You have to play witness.
That’s the thing I don’t regret. I don’t regret staying, however imperfectly I did so. I’ll never understand what she went through on a visceral level, but I was there. I know what events took place and I know what they did to her. I know what he did to her. That’s worth something. When she questioned herself, I could come alongside her and say, no, you’re not misremembering. He really did do those things. He really did put you through that. He really is a monster.
Even all these years later, I think there is something valuable in having someone else who can read the pages of Bad Romance and knows what she made up and what she didn’t. I hope it gives her strength.
That’s really your job, you know. It’s to love and stay and be strong, because she (or he) can’t right now. I know it seems like she should be able to, but she’s not and if you love her, you’ll stay strong in her place for a while. You’ll keep telling her the things she needs to hear. You’ll let her push you away. And then you’ll come running when she calls. You’ll jump into action when she’s ready; you’ll get her away from him. And then you’ll stand in front of her if need be, and you won’t let him near her.
You’ll also screw up sometimes. I was so incredibly obnoxious and self-righteous back then. Drinking and sex and even sneaking out were so far off my radar that I seriously gave her hell about them. I employed every guilt inducing method I could to make her see the error of her ways. Heather was so kind to me in the book. She didn’t include any of my angsty and egotistical speeches. But trust me, they happened. Obviously, they didn’t help. In fact, they probably only served to isolate her more.
In hindsight, you’ll regret these moments. But you know, it’s all part of the cycle of abuse, of trying to deal with something so unmatchable. Remember that you love your friend and you’re doing your best to help her. Give yourself a break and then give her a break. Apologize when you need to, and listen more than you talk. Stay on the phone as long as she needs. Even if she’s silent. Eventually, the space to breathe will make her feel the safety of your friendship.
As I said earlier, it’s been 16 years. That boy is long gone and Heather and Missy (the 3rd member of our trio) and I are still here. We’ve weathered college, marriages, babies, illness, even death. We’ve stood by each other, we’ve hurt each other, we’ve worked toward forgiveness. We’ve valued the deep history of our friendship, and we’ve honored it well.
I think our staying power is rooted in those early days of sticking together and refusing to let the darkness of abuse win. No matter how far down he pushed her, she always looked up. Your friend will too. Be there to pull her up and out. She can’t, and shouldn’t, do it alone.
Bad Romance Author: Heather Demetrios Publication Date: June 13th, 2017 Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Synopsis: Grace wants out. Out of her house, where her stepfather wields fear like a weap…
Here I talk about how to make your relationship a healthy one. #chooseyou
Come check out the BAD ROMANCE Pinterest board! Lots of moody goodness and inspiration here. xo
This is you, fighting for yourself - you and so many others (1 out of every 3 teens is affected by teen dating violence). Get the help you need to get out of your bad romance here.
Guest Post from YA Author Melanie J. Fishbane: Finding My Feminist Awesome Self
(Art Credit - The Brains Behind The Machine)
I’ve never written about this. Not publicly. My journal carries the weight of the feelings, the confusion, wondering if I was right thinking what I was thinking, that what was happening was verbal abuse and manipulation. But when Heather asked me if I would take part in effort to raise awareness about teen dating violence and abuse I knew I had a story to tell.
I didn’t want to tell it, but here it is.
Even now I worry about what people will think when they see it and what he might say if he ever saw this, but things happen in relationships where young women don’t recognize that what is happening is wrong. I didn’t. Not for a very long time. And when I did, I decided to break up with him. But I did go back, because I loved him. Eventually, I left him for good. It was only years later that I realized the impact this had on me, on how I dealt with my relationships with men and the toll it took on my self-esteem.
We were friends first. Then we were more than friends. My previous boyfriend had broken up with me because he wanted to have sex and I wasn’t ready and the guy right after that, the rebound, broke it off because he could see that I wasn’t ready to date. He was right.
That’s why we were friends first. For a long time. I was swept up in the idea of “friends becoming lovers” that I read about in the books I loved. So, when we kissed one night in the front seat of an old Mercury Monarch, I believed we were meant to be, that this was the universe colliding into something beautiful.
And it was beautiful at first. We traveled together, spent whole afternoons playing music and seeing movies. We would stay on the phone until 4 in the morning mooning over each other, talking about our grand plans. We believed in our love and there was a kinship that seemed extraordinary.
And then after about a year it all changed. He wanted more sexually and I wasn't ready. Seventeen seems old enough to have sex, but there was something holding me back. Maybe a deeper part of me was waiting, maybe I had heard too much about pregnancy and STDs and didn’t want to go on the pill yet, and maybe there was a part of me that knew the truth. It wasn’t right.
It began with small conversations about sexual frustrations, where I felt obligated to do things I wasn’t comfortable doing.
Then, I discovered feminist theory and studying women’s history, so the phone conversations until 4AM took on a tone altogether different. He would call me a “Fucking Feminist,” telling me how he didn’t like how I was “changing.” And I tried to convince him that he was wrong, that my ideas about women’s equality was not only about empowerment, but about changing the sexism I saw everywhere, about seeing that the world could be better—equal—for both of us.
But he couldn't see it. He refused to see it.
I broke up with him.
It wasn’t logical, though. Even while I was studying the works of Adrienne Rich and Naomi Wolf, I missed my best friend. After seeing someone pretty much every day for two years, it was impossible for me to see my life without him.
I went back to him.
I remember one night it was like my car drove me to his front door. And it was good. For a little while. But those issues were still there. I was nowhere closer to wanting to have intercourse and was in the throes of a feminist awaking. Not after the complicated relationship up and downs. We were in different places and he thrashed out with the same ugly words he had before.
I finally broke up with him again on a hill at the park around the corner from my house and I told him why. He was confused. I think he hated me for a long time. And I had a hard time trusting anyone…But I did start looking for someone who would be comfortable with my feminism and the woman I was becoming. And I claimed this political part of myself, studying it, reading it and writing about it. I became the feminist I wanted to be. The one I am now.
The fact is, I didn’t tell anyone what was happening. I didn’t tell my parents or my best friends. I was ashamed. But if this is happening to you, tell someone. Don’t do it alone, like I did. You don’t have to do it alone. Be empowered to speak out and claim it. You will find you are not alone and the healing can begin.
Today, I have a partner who would never call me ugly names at 4AM, or pressure me to do anything I’m uncomfortable with. He supports my spiritual and political ideas, my goals and aspirations. We are equal partners in life. I am myself with him. My feminist awesome self. My creative self. And, while we might not always agree, the conversations are always civil about the ideas, never attacking one another or name calling. He is my best friend and more than best friend. And he knows what happened.
And now you do, too.
Bio:
MELANIE J. FISHBANE holds an M.F.A. from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an M.A. from Concordia University. With over seventeen years’ experience in children's publishing, she also lectures internationally on children's literature. Her essay, "My Pen Shall Heal, Not Hurt": Writing as Therapy in L.M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside and The Blythes Are Quoted," is included in L.M. Montgomery's Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years 1911-1942 and her first YA novel, Maud: A Novel Inspired by the Life of L.M. Montgomery was published in 2017.
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Bad Romance comes out NEXT WEEK, on Tuesday June 13th! You can preorder and read the first few chapters here.
