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Post 1
Kylie Currier
Week 10 DB
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I think the way Pershall has written this memoir is amazing. She gives raw details about her life and what she has went through. In a way I relate to her, in the beginning of the memoir. She talks about her battle with BPD and depression. She defined depression on page 9 and I relate personally to it. Because of this it helps me understand her as a scared 14-year-old (from the beginning flash back history). She is a little Christian girl with not much experience in anything other than being a kid. She had a best friend, since she was five. She had a family and good parents. But then her illness took over. I think Pershall has a lot of conscious and unconscious emotional conflicts. She knows that her eating disorder is bad, she knows that it had stemmed from her depression and BPD. Before her anorexia she was bullied in school. Girls were mean to her. She developed rituals from the trauma from her being bullied, which again, eventually led to her anorexia and bulimia. She explained how she “rubbed my toes frantically in figure eights on my sheets, flexing and releasing my calf muscles in time and chanted in a whisper to calm the pounding and howling”. (Pershall, 27) Anorexia and bulimia is sort of like a ritual. Pershall explained how she had rituals before and after eating. “I’d eat a couple, throw up, eat a few more, repeat” (Pershall, 85) talking about the ritual she performed while eating saltine crackers. These are conscious and unconscious conflicts. Her mind is telling her she’s hungry. She’s weak. But her body is telling her she needs to be prettier and skinnier, she needs to purge. There’s a few things Pershall wants in the beginning of this memoir. She wants to be skinner, so she purges and starve herself. She wants to fit in so she makes friends with Lula. She wants to stop the bullying. She tries to find a way out by attempting suicide, although she cant go through with it. “But when I tried to press the knife hard enough against my skin, I couldn’t” (Pershall, 84). Her attempt failed. She had the ideation, she thought about how she’d do it, she even wrote a note. But her attempts would fail. I think her attempts failed because deep down she knew that dying wasn’t really what she wanted. She just wanted the pain to go away. She wanted the intrusive thoughts to stop. She didn’t want to be the way she was, but she didn’t have the strength to make it go away. I think she honestly doesn’t have much strength. She can’t make herself stop starving herself and purging. She can’t find the strength to stick up to Zoie and Lula. She knows what she wants but she can’t achieve it. She’s weak. I think this is proven when Pershall writes “Somewhere things had shifted, and now I was fighting my own war, inside my own head. I didn’t need other people at all anymore. It was just me and anorexia, all alone” (Pershall, 85). Pershall was alone, and weak and she knew it.
Pershall, S. (2012). Chapter 1-6. In Loud in the house of myself: Memoir of a strange girl (pp. 1-88). New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
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Hello Kylie. I really loved your post. The way you have analyzed and reflected on Pershall’s situation. I concur with you, especially when you say Pershall has conscious about her situation. She is so brave to narrate her experiences in life as she struggles with BPT and bipolar disorder. However, I do not think her attempt to commit suicide failed because she realized she wanted freedom, as you claim. I think she realized that what she wants most is love and someone she can talk to.
Allison Ramsey
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Pershall seemed to be just a little girl who got caught into a world of mental health issues at an insanely young age. She says the first time she remembers anything was being 7 years old, staring at her popcorn ceiling, and knowing that she didn’t want to live anymore. This is when all her problems started and she became observant of what was happening to her. Pershall explains that she had many problems going on in her life that made her the way she was. “It wasn’t just family life that made me retreat, it was also school. If you are an intelligent, overly sensitive, arguably mentally-ill child, and you are bullied, you get sicker”(Chapter 3). This can show the reader that all it takes is one little tick for someone to get upset, due to the many things weighing on their shoulders. She believed from a young age that she was unlovable, ugly, and not worthy of any attention. Pershall used music and Jesus to help her through the tough times in her life when her music was taken away she at first didn’t know what to feel. She grows up in a home where mental disorders are seen as a sin, which is never good for a child growing up. I think that she knew she had something to live for, something to fight for. From what I read so far, she seems to be wanting to tell others her story so if they are struggling, they can seek any advice they can from this memoir. She then develops the use of the power of new body modification to help her realize that she had all the power within her own skin.
“Chapter 3.” Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl, by Stacy Pershall, W.W. Norton, 2012.
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Hi Allison. Going through your post, I must admit it is great how you have put your thoughts into an analysis of Pershall’s situation. However, I cannot get to know what you think Pershall wants most in her life at the point described; for example, I think she wants freedom, free from social isolation, depression, stress, and bullying at school. From this argument, you can see that she attempts suicide as a solution. Otherwise, you have a great post.
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BernadetteTop of Form
From what Pershall tells us, she was a highly intelligent child growing up. Her problems began with mental abuse from her parents. Because her parents didn’t understand her, they thought her to be weird and complicated. Because of this, her parents seemed to ignore her presence and allow her to do what she wanted. One example would be how they let her eat whatever she wanted and not monitor the quantity. As Pershall got older and went to school, she realized she was different and educationally more advanced than her peers. The other students noticed how awkward she was and started to bully her. This continued into high school. From the bullying, she would cope with punishing herself. Pershall was conscious of her actions of punishment. She would sit in her closet and write on her body all the cruel words that had been said to her in a day. When Pershall started to date, her boyfriend made her feel fat, and she developed an eating disorder to keep him. Pershall just wanted to fit in and feel loved. She wanted a real friend, someone who understood her and not judge her for being weird. I feel Pershall attempts to try and get these things by doing what she feels others expect from her. I do not believe from what we have read so far that Pershall was attempting to commit suicide. I think it was more of a cry for help. It seemed a means of her getting the attention she needed. In one of the chapters, Parshall gets angry and is kicking a wall; she stops in fear that she could cause herself a heart attack or break something. I believe that if she were serious about killing herself, she wouldn’t have stopped herself. I find Pershall has a lot of control; she is aware of what is right and wrong. She also knows how far to go with her actions and when or where is the right time to carry out these actions.
Work Cited:
Loud in the House of Myself by Stacy Pershall
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Dear Bernadette, your post shows that you are such a critical thinker, especially towards the end. Your post superbly sets off by describing the experiences Pershall lived. I like it when you said Pershall did not want to commit suicide, but her action was rather ‘a cry for attention.’ This argument reflects what Pershall wants most, but you have not explained why you think she failed. I also think you forgot to explain Pershall’s conscious and unconscious emotional conflicts.
Meghan Hance
DB week 10
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Although the experiences of Stacy’s childhood and adolescence are relatively typical experiences, her existing mental health disorders intensify her reactions. I myself have been target to early adolescent bullying by other girls in my class, and it takes a toll on the victim, even without mental health struggles. Often for myself it was somatic manifestations such as upset stomach, diarrhea and vomiting. Bringing these issues to adult attention often makes the bullying worsen. I feel that the comparable experiences as a teenage girl has helped me better understand some of the struggle that Stacy had experienced, although I can never fully understand the intensity to which she is feeling the effects.
I believe that Stacy wants to feel genuinely loved and valued by another individual. For example, her attempts to win Michael’s attention, Owen’s affection and the friendship of Zoe and Lula. When her brother Cameron was born, her mother’s love and affection was solely directed at him, and her father was out of town often for his job. When she believes that she has done something undeserving of love or affection, she punishes herself as a bad dog. “I felt so undeserving of companionship that if I found ways to soothe myself, I needed an imaginary enemy to dole out an equal and opposite punishment” (Pershall, 2011). I believe she felt that she had to beg and demand for love and affection. When that failed to work, the eating disorder began to consume her life. “Factors thought to be involved include life stresses, biological factors, and societal pressure to be thin” (Stoppler, 2016). She felt that maybe if she was skinny enough, she would find the love that she yearned for. Given her situation, I feel that the lack of affection is not Stacy’s fault at all. The faults of these individuals have affected Stacy personally and she feels responsible for this.
References
Pershall, S. (2011). Loud In The House Of Myself. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Stoppler, M. (2016). Eating Disorders: Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating. Retrieved from MedicineNet: https://www.medicinenet.com/eating_disorders_pictures_slideshow/article.htm
Hello Meghan, I feel sorry for what you went through. I had never been a victim of bullying, but I can imagine the physical, emotional, and psychological stress you went through. I must admit that your post is wonderful, even though I tend to disagree with you. There is just no way Pershall would feel loved if she is a victim of a bully, social isolation, and depression and lacks emotional support from family members.