We humans are all broken, broken by life’s trials and tribulations, fragmented by bullies who shoot holes in our confidence, or traumatized by loss—whether a consequence of death, divorce, or some other life-altering trauma. How we respond to this brokenness forms the core of Kathleen Glasgow’s newest book, The Glass Girl. In this powerfully poignant book, Glasgow features fifteen-year-old Isabella Leahey’s relationship with alcohol.
Bella wears not only her make-up like a mask but baggy clothes “to leave room for her pain to grow” (2). Suffering from anxiety disorder, neglect, and low-confidence levels, Bella stays at the margins and tries not to think too much. Because of her parents’ recent divorce, the death of her beloved grandmother, and her recent break-up with Dylan, who tells her “sometimes, you’re too much,” Bella is learning new routines, trying to be a “good girl.” She gets good grades, helps around the house, holds down a job, and assists with her autistic seven-year-old sister, Ricci.
Overwhelmed, adrift, and without solid mooring, Bella needs something to hold. With her brain and her heart constantly fighting and because of her beliefs that she’s a problem that no one wants to solve or love, Bella finds solace in alcohol and routinely smooths the rough edges of her life with vodka. She hides this balm to her pain in a Sprite bottle, calling it Sprodka. To justify her drinking and her consumption of Nyquil when alcohol isn’t readily available, she tells herself: “I had a shitty day. That’s what adults do: they drink after a shitty day; Why can’t I?” (98).
She drinks to feel numb, to drown out the voices in her brain, to “give [herself] voice and a person to be, and to add color to what is just plain and ugly. . . . All those talks they give you in school. . . . You matter. You belong. It’s a lie. If we mattered or belonged, we would not be her right now, smoking and drinking and getting high. Right?” (125).
This process and justification of her behavior work for her until she experiences a bout with acute alcohol poisoning and nearly dies. Now, she’s at Sonoran Sunrise, a rehabilitation facility for teen addiction in the Arizona desert. Here, the therapists—recovering addicts themselves—tell her that she will learn to rewire her impulses, retrain her brain, and create pleasure naturally. As they teach the group tools for coping, Bella makes progress, has relapses, writes impact letters, and learns a poem that helps to remind her that trauma isn’t something to smoke down, choke down, drown, or kill. Rather, pain has to be faced. The difficult parts of life or ourselves that we wish to destroy instead must learn to coexist. She also receives her first Christmas gift from a boy.
Once she’s out of rehab, Bella has to face her demons and apply all that she has gained. How that works out for her is the reader’s to discover.
This book will likely haunt readers since it bumps up against truth and reality, making us all realize that we can smooth out life’s sharp edges with substance abuse—attempting to drown whatever is eating us alive—or attempt to bury shame and anxiety and trauma by dropping pills on them, but in the end, the trauma is still there. Glasgow reminds us that we must live in spite of all this.
- Donna