At the edge of adolescence, Tracy is a smart straight-A student--if not a little naive (it seems...she smokes and she cuts to alleviate the emotional pain she suffers from having a broken home and hating her mom's boyfriend, Brady.) When she befriends Evie, the most popular and beautiful girl in school, Evie leads Tracy down a path of sex, drugs and petty crime (like stealing money from purses and from stores). As Tracy transforms herself and her identity, her world becomes a boiling, emotional cauldron fueled by new tensions between her and her mother--as well as, teachers and old friends.
The trailer:
This was a hard film to watch. It reminded me way too much of my own life at that age, except that I did the male version of trying to numb the pain by self-destructing. But I, too, was an A student until the age of 13, then my father died, my mother came apart at the seams, and I was left to raise myself (and my sister, while also trying to take care of my mother), and to try to deal with the upheaval of my life. Much like Tracy in the film, I didn't do a very good job of it.
I was twenty when I wrote this poem -- high on LSD, pot, and vodka. It sums up the feeling of my teen years, the desolation, the despair, but also the realization -- however clouded -- that I was doing this to myself. "Only I have the key."
remains of a broken bottle beside the river
i can only remember days when rain
would come from darkness,
and it's the darkness,
the shadow of the crow, the need
to touch something deeper
than her body lying beside me
so far from reach, my own body
hideous in a mirror void
of reflection, my back against
smooth tile and sweat is slippery,
it's that feeling, vision held
at the fragile tip of a candle
wandering through the emptiness
of a cave too familiar, walls
of my skull, and it's the darkness,
blackness at the bottom of a bottle
i swore against, blackness
at the bottom of a mountain lake
when the moon is round
and the lightning has stopped,
but nothing really stops,
there is always the going,
lavender violence and burning yellows
of sunset, then night, cool and clean
as starlight, sounds of bullfrogs
and distant coyote, darkness into which i dive
as into a liquid cave warm and mythic,
swimming to center, body falling away
into moist darkness, behind my eyes
the big black sun pushing its way out,
rupturing the bond, and expulsion
into a dawn i cannot force
beneath the surface, always
this going, my heart still pounds
against the confine of ribs, restriction,
and all the stars gathered into one source
can never blind the sun, even in night
the sun burns in my skull, flames haunting me
as only i can really haunt me,
searching the same dusty corners
for anything i've not found before,
kicking through autumn leaves
in the park, rain falling as from a dream,
the necessity of liquid, purifying flesh
and soul, poems i cry out
over and over. . .
where does it go from here, the despair,
the desperation for something more,
watching the river, moving water
is everything, the sound pulling me
into darkness, and it's the darkness,
looking out from the inside, emptiness
of the bottle, looking out
from inside the center of a flame,
where is the stillness of sleep,
the inside of a room with no movement,
no sound but the constant pound of seconds
pushing against restraints,
chains threaten to snap easily
but hold, always tight around
my wrists, and only i have the key,
so the problem is clear,
where to move, how to crack
the mud solidifying on my eyes,
where to begin to end the poem,
it wanders, a child fighting out
from a cold storm, rain and wind,
and the smile worn in a graveyard,
grays of stone and winter and clouds
swirling over my head in constant motion
and the fear of falling, deeper and deeper
into what i already know
awaits me, sunlight burning holes
through photographs, and as i remember
all of this i pace, sweaty,
trying to imagine rain,
not thunder and lightning,
just rain, soft, quiet, rustle
of leaves, smells clean and silent,
but not silent, birds, a crow,
and the distant drift of water,
the river, always standing beside the river,
broken promises to the bottle,
empty, thrown and shattered on hot
gray rocks, the damn sun overhead,
and the crows i always see
circling above me, waiting,
so i walk away, indignant,
alone
Not too long after writing this I quit doing drugs and stopped drinking every day (for a while, at least -- the drinking returned in college). I have spent the last twenty years trying to heal the wounds that haunted me for those years, and that I accrued during those years. I think it was Jung who said we spend the rest of our lives healing the damage from the first 20 years.
Along the way, I found some cathartic music that helps -- it's always easier when you know you are not the only one who feels a given way.
Gotta love Trent Reznor. Broken, if it had been released in the 1980s, would have been the soundtrack to my decay. But in many ways, it was a distinctly 90s album, dependent on the birth of industrial music for its sound and textures.
Anyway, this film plunged me into some deep shadow stuff. Which is useful, I think. It's been a while since I have plumbed the depths of my teen years. I used to hate that punk-ass kid with all the piercings and spiked jewelry, that little fuck-up who couldn't cope and created so much chaos for everyone and anyone who cared about him.
But now, looking back (after some years of good therapy), I just wish I could hold him and tell him it won't always be that way. The pain does heal. The chaos does become order. But kids at that age can never see that far-- it all seems so immediate to them. Whatever pain they feel seems as though it is the whole world. For me, at least, it all seemed like it would last forever, that I would always be in pain and wanting to drown myself in oblivion.
Growing up is tough in the best conditions -- its hellish in bad conditions.
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