Escape/ism

There is a difference between wanting to leave your home and wanting to escape it.

Young Adult stories often can tackle the idea of leaving your home, because it's on teenagers' minds.

Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, College, right?

Maybe you'll be someone who changes that up a bit and goes to a trade school instead.

Maybe you'll go into the army because you can't afford college, but college is your goal.

Maybe you're well aware of how you can't afford college, so you try not to think about it.

And the scary after we try not to think about.

Of course it's on teenagers' minds.

But I'm talking about the latter category today: escape.

Before you plan your getaway to somewhere far away from all the pain, you were probably already escaping in a different way; for me it was reading, writing, and the internet.

Stories are the ultimate escapism. Stories immerse you in a pool of words as you swim to a different world, far away from your own. You can be someone else. Perhaps depending on your identity, you have to pretend harder, because there's no one like you, or maybe resign yourself to not being immersed.

Maybe because there's no story that fits yours, you write them. Or maybe you want to see more from your favorite characters, so you write fan-fiction. Or Maybe you want to tell your story.

In Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here, the titular Scarlett finds her escape through two things: a television series and fan-fiction about said-series. Then the show gets canceled. So she starts placing people she knows into her fan-fiction as a way to vent her frustrations with her life.

In The Poet X the main character, Xiomara, writes poetry constantly, but it's mostly a secret. She writes about her struggles with her faith (when her mother very much wants her to be a good Catholic), her experiences with boys, and her family.

For both people it obviously goes poorly, but for different reasons. I'd argue that for the former, Scarlett is getting her dues for something she did wrong, and the latter, Xiomara is punished, but for no crime the average reader will feel she committed.

Both people have a goal of leaving town, just enduring until they graduate, can get out. But the books, while about their escapism through writing, are also about their endurance.

It's something I very much would have liked as a teenager, and I'm glad these books are around now. Both could probably be used as bibliotherapy for a teenager waiting to escape.

My escape didn't go as planned, because when you escape, even if you leave with nothing in your pockets, you carry the baggage of memories. These books had the characters change their perspective even slightly on what they were escaping from, and it ended before say, graduation, when they could escape, but you're left to wonder: if they still want to escape, would they be successful? I'm sure you want to believe that, but they have the baggage of the past, so you could certainly make the argument they won't be.

However, while you can see yourself in these characters, you must separate yourself from these characters. It's unfair to the story to assume they're living your life, when they don't have your history, your worldview.

Write the story of your own escape.

Feel free to at me on the Fediverse, please provide context though.

@lapis@booktoot.club

@lapis@bookwyrm.social