The Luckiest Girl in the World

This novel is about Katie Roskova is a young girl who attends an exclusive private school. She has a grade average of A and is training to be a champion figure skater. Her mother pushes her incredibly hard, though. Katie has almost no time to herself between school and before-school skating practice.

Very early in the novel, though, Katie is having a difficult time with her skating. Mentally she is deriding herself:

"'Stupid', railed the voice insider her head. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid.'"

"‘Loser', the voice insider her head screamed. ‘Loser, loser, loser.'"

What her mother doesn't know is that Katie is cutting herself on purpose in order to help her keep her self-control. (This cutting is referred to as SIV, or Self Inflicted Violence.)

Even when she starts to think about a boy she likes in school her own self-deprecation steps in.

"'Right,' said the voice insider her head. ‘And when he gets to know you, he'll find out how crazy you are. Then you can watch him run.' The daydream died quickly. Katie knew in her heart that she was never going to have a boyfriend-or a best friend. She couldn't risk letting anyone get close enough to know her secrets."

In one of her classes, though, her teacher notices that Katie is bleeding. Out of this one of the book's themes develops; a teacher notices something, reports it to administration and receives virtually no support at all, basically just opposition. The teacher simply is mistaken in her assumptions. She is told that the girl has no problem other than that she falls down at times during her skating.

Again, in another incident a teacher notices that her arms are bloody but Katie only implies that it was the result of another accident. At home Katie even cuts her own breasts, angry that her body is developing and that this might be causing her problems in her skating.

Matters reach a terrible point when, sort of "spacing out", Katie is at school and begins to slam her locker door on her hand over and over and over. She is finally stopped by others. The girl is taken to the principal's office and is there along with one of her teachers and the school nurse.

The school nurse arranges for an ambulance and notifies Katie's mother. The principal, though, is only concerned about the effect this outburst might have on the school, perhaps even causing some parents to withdraw their kids. He places the school first and the needs of the students a distant second.

When Katie's mother gets there she tries to say it was just an accident while the school people tell her it was a self-inflicted injury. She ends up very reluctantly agreeing to sign a form saying that Katie will receive professional psychological help.

While at the hospital, though, Katie's cuts on her arm are discovered and she has to see the hospital's psychiatrist. Later, one of the school people dealing with her "case" says:

"Essentially, self-mutilation is a coping mechanism for a kid who doesn't have any other way to handle her feelings. When her stress is too great, the pain gives her something to focus on."

The school's therapist later tells Katie that she will have to work with another, non-school therapist. Katie's thoughts run like this:

"And besides, you'd rather be dead that get involved with me," Katie thought. "That'll teach you," the voice inside her head sneered at her. "As son as people know about you, they run. And that's the way it's always going to be."

Her new therapist tries to explain to her what is going on.

"What you've done," he want on in his chatty way," is to substitute physical pain for psychological pain. When you hurt yourself, that focuses your mind on the blood you produce and the physical sensations you feel instead of the emotions you can't handle. It's an ingenious solution to a problem that must seem impossible."

The rest of the book deals with Katie's meeting a therapist and becoming part of a therapy group and her mother's continuing refusal to accept the fact that Katie had problems. Her mother sees what she wants to see, even if that is not the truth.

This can be an extremely upsetting and graphic book, but without those scenes and references the book would not be anywhere near as powerful. The quotes I included show just how much of a negative self-image a person who practices SIV can have. It's related to anorexia in that the person feels that they have almost no control over their life at all, and to cut (or refuse to eat) is one way to establish some control.

What people need to keep in mind here is something very important. Physical pain can be very, very terrible, but in most cases the person suffering the pain can see an eventual end to it. The person falls down and breaks their arm. They know that they will have their arm attended to, put into a cast, and maybe in a month or so the cast will be removed, their arm will be well and there won't be any more pain from the break.

With a person suffering emotional pain, however, the person with the pain may very well see no end in sight for that pain, ever. For example, a person is in a very painful relationship. They might think that , once that relationship is over, any other one they get into will be just as bad, if not worse. Or, say, a person is transgendered and cannot afford the hormone treatments and therapy. They will know the emotional pain of not being the gender they know they should have been born and that they will never be that gender. That type of pain can continue for the rest of the person's life.

So emotional pain can be just as bad as physical pain and, in many circumstances, even worse in that the person with the pain will see no end to their emotional pain, ever. So emotional pain can be enough to cause a person to injure themselves on purpose, again to try and obtain some, even minor, control over their life and maybe reduce that emotional pain a little.

This is a really good book and anyone who has this problem, or even feels that they might start to practice self-injury should read this book.