bluecastle | 28 Books -- Day 24

The Diary of Anne Frank

I don't know why I keep putting off writing about this book. Perhaps it's just that my connection to it is so painful and personal.

I have always been shy and awkward, and was always picked on by kids at school. Part of it was that I started school at a younger age than most of my classmates and as such was a bit socially retarded.

Long story short, I just never quite fit in. Glasses. Awkward. Always got along with boys better than girls. Excelled at reading. Couldn't multiply for nothing...

I will never understand why people see shy and equate it to stuck-up, but that's followed me all my life.

Anyway... when I was ten we moved two mountains over to a new town, and suddenly I didn't know ANYBODY and being cripplingly shy didn't help. Girls hated me. Boys scorned me. Abuse happened that I can't even think about without getting all tangled up inside.

It was worst in middle school. By the time high school rolled around it was still bad, but I was in the band, and eventually got involved with the drama kids, and found some tolerance among the arty crowd. Plus we all grew up a bit.

But middle school was a bloody nightmare. It was awful and I am surprised I survived. I would come home every day and cry.

After the shootings in Columbine my mother asked me "you were one of those outsider kids ... how come you never went nutso?" Actually, I probably did go a little nuts (and I probably still am... unknown people and situations still freak me out). But I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that this book went a long way to preventing me from going completely batty.

What I saw in that book, was someone else who was oppressed on a daily basis. It gave me someone to sympathize with. I read a lot of books about girls affected by the holocaust back then. I understood what it felt like to have people hatin' on you. This book and others like it made me feel less alone. In all kinds of ways it might be the most important book of my life.

I'm nearly in tears here as I type this.

Anneliese Marie Frank, the girl, was as unlike me as it is possible to be. But in the end... we were still pretty much the same. Her strength helped me find my own. It helped me withstand some terrible things. She believed in the goodness of people, and I wanted to believe her. I still do.

“Will this year, 1944, bring us victory? We don't know yet. But where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. We'll need to be brave to endure the many fears and hardships and the suffering yet to come.”