My Heart and other Black Holes

My Heart and other Black Holes

YA fiction
In 2013 Jasmine Warga lost one of her closest friends. Writing
proved to be a way for her to cope with her feelings. Luckily for us,
instead of limiting her expression to a for her eyes only diary, she
created the poignant and haunting My Heart and other Black Holes.
Aysel is the teen age daughter of a man who beat her small
town's great hope for Olympic Glory, a loved by all can-do-no-wrong
golden boy, to death. Needless to say, despite her innocence, she has
become persona non grata in town and school. She also has a deep
private fear. She had no clue that her beloved father had the
capacity to act so brutally. What if it's encoded in her genes to
snap when the right stimulus presents itself?
Wouldn't everyone be better off without her?
Aysel often wonders what the actual experience of dying will be
like and what will lie beyond it. She worries about inability to go
through with "...Running away from my black hole of a future,
preventing myself from growing into the person I'm terrified of
becoming..." Her intentions are thwarted by her self-preservation
instinct to the point where she feels like her mind and body are in a
never-ending war.
Then she finds a website that helps people locate suicide
partners. "...I guess the way it works is you find some other sad
excuse for a person who lives pretty nearby and you make your final
plans with them. It's like peer pressure suicide, and from what I
gather it's pretty damn effective..."
There's a boy close to her age in the next town over who feels
her depth of hopelessness. They accept each other as partners and
start getting together to work out the details. Only a funny thing
starts to happen. Effective may not be foolproof.
On a very sad personal note, last week Orono Community Garden lost our
fine mascot dog Mika. She left her paw prints on a lot of people's
hearts and will be greatly missed.
A great big shout out and a prayer for comfort goes out to all who are
grieving the loss of beloved animal companions.
Julia Emily Hathaway



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