<p>Have you ever been too afraid to read a book?</p>

<p>I’ve had this memoir called The Tender Land sitting around my house for 3 weeks.&#0160; I checked it out of the library fully intending to read it, but the more I thought about the book and its subject matter the more afraid I became of it.</p>

<p>The book is about the suicide of the author’s younger brother and the impact it has on the family.&#0160; You learn about the suicide and his reason for killing himself (heartbreakingly it’s a junior high humiliation) on the book jacket, so it’s not like it was a surprise.&#0160; But every time I picked up the book the author’s regrets and love really came through in her excellent writing; the pain so raw it hurt to read it.&#0160; I came across her brother’s suicide note while flipping through the book and the knot that developed in my throat is still there some six hours later.&#0160; In it he says that decided to kill himself because he is tired of being unloved, that during lunch at the school cafeteria he has to sit near people that don’t like him, that the girls that sit behind him in class giggle about him behind his back.&#0160; That he isn’t a fun person.&#0160; And that is why he killed himself, even though he knows that that means he will go to hell (he’s a catholic).&#0160; He wanted to call his friend to tell him that he was going to kill himself that night, but he felt like a failure for not being able to talk about it.</p>

<p>I can’t even type this without tearing up.&#0160; I can’t imagine how his family must have felt, knowing that their love wasn’t enough to keep him alive.&#0160; That childhood slights, which all of us have faced, hurt him so much that he killed himself.</p>

<p>I mean, aren’t those things that we all go through?&#0160; Just read Mrs. Fortune&#39;s <a href="http://mrsfortune.blogspot.com/2006/04/sins-of-mother.html">excellent post</a> on this and the responses she received.&#0160; We are all awkward children inside.&#0160; How many of us had miserable days, weeks, months, years in our youths yet we never reach that point of pure despair, that point of wanting, needing to end it all?&#0160; Why do most of us make it while others don’t?</p>

<p>Ever since I became a mother I have become hypersensitive to the cruelties of childhood.&#0160; I don’t watch the local news because I can’t hear about children who have been wronged by their own families.&#0160; I can’t hear my nephew telling me how the other kids in his 3rd grade classroom don’t want him to sit at their table because he stinks at kickball.&#0160; I can’t hear about Mexicans handing their children to smugglers in a desperate attempt to give them a better life.&#0160; I never look at my spam folder because I’m afraid I’ll see a disgusting message from a pedophile.</p>

<p>I remember hating eight grade.&#0160; I was new in school, and was lonely.&#0160; Yet, somehow, I knew that it wouldn’t always be like this.&#0160; Maybe it was my love of reading, but more likely it was the knowledge that my family would be moving to America at the end of the school year.&#0160; That offered me a concrete escape.&#0160; Kids are very literal.&#0160; Every time I see an unhappy child I want to hug him and promise him that things change, life changes, that they are full of possibilities.&#0160; That their eight grade self, while always a part of them, is not all of the person they are to become.&#0160; Of course, the typical eight grader would think that I am full of shit.</p>

<p>Like every mother out there, I protect my child fiercely.&#0160; I don’t want the innocent sparkle in his eyes to ever go away.&#0160; But I don’t live in a fantasy world.&#0160; I know that no matter what I do, someday, my child will be wronged.&#0160; Kids will tease him.&#0160; Maybe he won’t be part of the cool crowd because he’s wearing the wrong shoes.&#0160; Or he won’t make the team.&#0160; It’s unavoidable.&#0160; The rational psychologist in me tells me that worrying is futile, that all I can do is to prepare him.&#0160; That my job is to build up his character to deal with life; to share the perspective of the 28 year head start I have.&#0160; Truth lies in perception.&#0160; </p>

<p>But for now, the weight of this responsibility is paralyzing.</p>

<p>It’s one of my biggest fears.&#0160; That my child will be hurt and I won’t be able to make it go away.</p>
