The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan

I am currently reading The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan. It is about a young girl, Grace, who, in 1914, elopes with Henry Winters, the love of her life. They decide to move to America from London to escape Henry's judging parents. Henry takes Grace aboard an elegant ocean liner. However, halfway there, there is an explosion on the ship, and it sinks. Henry sacrifices his life to put Grace on a lifeboat, which is immensley overcrowded. There is a brutal power struggle between a sailor, Mr. Hardie, and a powerful maternal figure.
      I'm not very far into the book, but from what I can tell, Grace is unable to choose a side. Mr. Hardie is very experienced at sea. He seems to know what he's doing. However, he is very cruel, and when there is a small drowning boy in the water, he whacks him in the head with an oar until he drowns. She is also drawn towards Mrs. Grant, a major maternal figure, who seems to calm people down. She wants to take more people into the lifeboat. But both the reader and Grace know that Mr. Hardie is right, that if they took any more people in, the lifeboat would sink and they would all die.
     To survive, Grace has to make the choice of who to trust, of who she thinks should lead the 39 survivors of the shipwreck.

Sullen Girl by Fiona Apple

My favorite song is currently "Sullen Girl" by Fiona Apple.
I believe it is about when she was molested by a stranger when she was twelve years old, and how it affected and ruined her life, and made her who she is currently.
"Sullen Girl" is tragically tender. It is a symphony of sweeping and bitter emotion, laced with mourning.

Days like this, I don't know what To do with myself
All day and all night

After the violation, and on hard days, Apple does not know how to cope.
I wander the halls, Along the walls and Under my breath I say to myself "I need fuel To take flight"

She needs something to feed off of to help her feel free, perhaps someone to comfort her.

And there's too much going on
But it's calm under The waves
In the blue of my oblivion
Apple is tired of being bombarded with comments on how "sullen" she is, and how she knows, inside, there are people oblivious to how happy and unaffected she is inside.


Is that why they call me
A sullen girl, sullen girl

In an interview, Apple says that before the molestation, "I used to be this really lighthearted person. And I still am a lighthearted person, but everyone looks at me and they think I'm really serious and depressed and sullen. Do I come off that way because of this experience?"
Apple wonders if the reason why people perceive her as a 'sick person,' or a "sullen girl," is because of the rape.

They don't know
I used to sail the
Deep and tranquil sea

As previously stated, before the rape, Fiona Apple was seen as a lighthearted, happy girl.

But he washed me ashore
And he took my pearl
And left an empty
Shell of me

The man who raped Fiona showed her the harsh reality of the world, or the "shore."

He took her innocence, and left her bitter.

And there's too
Much going on
But it's calm under the waves
In the blue of my oblivion

CYBERBULLYING (Non-Fiction Post)

I am a victim of cyberbullying.

So are a lot of other kids my age, older, and younger.
It hurts, a lot. It hurts to log onto your page on an anonymous forum website after a relatively good day and see pure hate pouring out from your screen. It hurts when people tell you to kill yourself, or when people accuse you of something you did or didn't do. It hurts when people hurt the ones you love in order to hurt you.
You wonder why. Who posted this? What did you do to deserve this? Why do they hate you so much? Are they jealous for some reason? Angry over a long-held grudge? Or is it really just actual hate?
Whatever it is, it really, really hurts.
It hurt so much, I had to deactivate my account on this website for the fourth time.
The first time was because of a creepy Internet stalker. The second was because my friends were getting bullied, and I didn't want to be a victim next. The third was because my friends started to use the site to start fights. I guess I'm stupid for reactivating it every time. I'm not sure why I keep doing it.
This time I deactivated because I got over fifteen extreme hate messages in my inbox. Of course I've gotten in disgruntled arguments with friends online before, but nothing as extreme and graphic as the messages I got today. I was shocked, and so incredibly hurt. At school, off the Internet, I have many wonderful friends who I get along with, and I am not bullied and I'm not a bully. So it came as a bitter surprise to me that someone could hate me so much for reasons that were all but credible.

I decided to do my monthly non fiction post on cyberbullying because I guess I just wanted to pour my heart out on my own personal relation and experience with this topic. I chose the article Students Warn Peers About Cyberbullying by Dawn Turner Trice. In the article, Trice explains how one student, Tiffany Witkowski, deactivated her Facebook account because she was getting messages like ones I was getting, but these messages were not anonymous and not as extreme. I identified with Tiffany because I felt the way she did- "I never felt physically threatened. But I felt emotionally threatened. I said, 'Why is this happening to me?' I needed emotional stability, so I just got rid of Facebook," she said.

Cyberbullying has been proved to lead to many suicides and cases of depression. I'm not going to let this get to me so much, so I'm going to try and not be a part of that statistic. Tiffany says that one of her friends was the victim of cyberbullying, which was so extreme that it caused her to have suicidal thoughts and that it changed her forever.

I'm not going to let this ruin the rest of my day, tomorrow, the rest of this year, or my life. Cyberbullying is wrong, and it's something that should never, ever be done.