In Which I Suffer Through New Moon: Chapter 4 -- Waking Up · 4:17pm Mar 9th, 2018
If any chapter in the series so far has come close to breaking me, it’s this one. If I wasn’t reading the series to find out what it did wrong, if I was only reading it out of a trainwreck mentality, I would’ve quit here.
Summary: Bella pines for Edward. That’s it. She’s lifeless, motivationless, delusional, borderline suicidal. It might be a compelling image of the heartbreak one feels after losing love, except, A) I don’t care about the characters, B) the “love” never felt genuine in the first place, and C) it’s been more than FOUR MONTHS. Bella’s had FOUR MONTHS to get over Edward, but she still whines like he left yesterday. Previous chapters were tolerable. This? This is some of the most abysmal, grating, boring writing I’ve ever forced myself to read.
I already added a multiplier to the Clinginess Meter. I already added a multiplier, I already added a multiplier, I already added a multiplier, I already added a multiplier…
Count to four. Inhale. Count to four. Exhale.
Okay. Let’s do this. For real.
We open with this paragraph:
Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.
And Charlie’s put up with this sort of thing for months. Saint that fucker.
Charlie finally confronts Bella over her behavior, saying that maybe she should go to Jacksonville and Renee. He points out that Bella isn’t doing anything, and even getting into trouble would be better than that. She’s lifeless, he says. Bella apologizes, but when he tells her to not apologize, she asks he wants her to do. Bella is so passive she needs other characters to tell her what to do.
With his Father of the Year award in hand as he makes a run for Father of the Decade, Charlie tries to connect to Bella with his own experiences.
“When your mother left,” he began, frowning, “and took you with her.” He inhaled deeply. “Well, that was a really bad time for me.”
“I know, Dad,” I mumbled.
“But I handled it,” he pointed out. “Honey, you’re not handling it. I waited, I hoped it would get better.” He stared at me and I looked down quickly. “I think we both know it’s not getting better.”
Charlie says Bella might need professional help, but she ignores him, thinking that that would only help if she wanted to spend the rest of her life in a padded cell. (So don’t tell the psychiatrist that Edward’s a vampire. His vampirism has nothing to do with your depression.) Charlie then says that she’d have a better chance of not being miserable if she got out of Forks, but Bella brushes it off with weak excuses. Which Charlie calls her out on, thankfully.
His fist came down on the table again. “We both know what’s really going on here, Bella, and it’s not good for you.” He took a deep breath. “It’s been months. No calls, no letters, no contact. You can’t keep waiting for him.”
I glowered at him. The heat almost, but not quite, reached my face. It had been a long time since I’d blushed with any emotion. This whole subject was utterly forbidden, as he was well aware.
CM + 1
Without any good answers to this, Bella quickly leaves for school, saying she might go out with friends that night. She mopes around during most of the day, and we learn that the bulk of the school’s English curriculum is apparently romances. Bella decides she’ll ask Jessica if she wants to go out. There’s a brief note that Jessica stopped talking to her weeks ago due to Bella’s antisocial behavior, just to give you an idea of how bad Bella is. Even though Bella never apologizes, never says anything like, “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you, I just had a really bad time in life,” Jessica still agrees to go to a zombie movie with her.
The rest of the day passes, and Bella and Jessica head to Port Angeles for the movie.
I kept Jess talking through the previews, so I could ignore them more easily. But I got nervous when the movie started. A young couple was walking along a beach, swinging hands and discussing their mutual affection with gooey falseness. I resisted the urge to cover my ears and start humming. I had not bargained for a romance.
Once she gets past the romance, Bella finds the rest of the movie tolerable, but something sets her off about it, and she doesn’t know why.
It wasn’t until almost the very end, as I watched a haggard zombie shambling after the last shrieking survivor, that I realized what the problem was. The scene kept cutting between the horrified face of the heroine, and the dead, emotionless face of her pursuer, back and forth as it closed the distance.
And I realized which one resembled me the most.
…I don’t even…
The movie ends, and Bella and Jessica head out for dinner. But as they’re walking to their restaurant, Bella sees a man who may have been in the group that accosted her a year ago, the group Edward saved her from.
So she starts walking towards him.
hnyjuhnyyhj7uhhhyry6i9
Sorry, that was so stupid I had to pound my head against the keyboard.
Jessica sees Bella doing this and tries to pull her away — several times — but Bella ignores her and keeps walking. And then Bella starts hallucinating. Really. She hears Edward’s voice reprimanding her, telling her to not be reckless and to go back to Jessica. It manages to snap Bella out of her daze.
The anger in his voice was concern, the same anger that was once very familiar — something I hadn’t heard in what felt like a lifetime.
CM + 1
Bella decides that she’s hallucinating because, deep down, she still thinks Edward cares about her and is projecting what he would have said in this situation. In a rare moment of lucidity, she admits that being grateful for this is hardly sane, but that lucidity vanishes, because grateful she is. As Edward’s voice fades, she takes another step towards the man (jmjkkjhnjhhgbfgvkmbgbfv) and the voice comes back. Satisfied that she’s hallucinating, Bella goes to dinner with Jessica.
I tried to start a conversation a few times while we ate, but Jessica was not cooperative. I must have really offended her.
Well, no fucking shit. You decide to go out with her for the first time in months, and during the trip, you suddenly start walking towards a suspicious-looking group of random strangers without a word? Yes, you offended her!
During the drive home, Bella waits for anguish to take her over, the anguish she tried to avoid by shutting herself off from the world to avoid. But she doesn’t feel anything but relief at hearing Edward’s voice.
I worried — late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses — that it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice.
CM + 1
At home, Bella doesn’t understand why her actions pissed off Jessica so much. Charlie’s waiting for her, angry that she didn’t leave a note telling where she’d gone. In bed, she realizes that, while the pain is still there, she can live with it. She’s woken up. Sadly, I didn’t wake up after reading this.
Clinginess Meter: 23 x 2
If you think this was bad, imagine reading it. It’s hard to describe just how dull and messed-up Bella is in this chapter. If I commented on every time Bella did or said something terrible, I’d probably wind up just copy-pasting the whole chapter. The sole reason the Clinginess Meter hasn’t skyrocketed is because Bella is doing her best to not think about Edward.
I did some checking. Bella seriously hits several signs of clinical depression. Because her boyfriend left her.
Fuck this chapter.
I can't help but think that if Jessica told Charlie what had happened, he'd have Bella institutionalized. And it would be the best outcome for everyone involved.
I'd love to see a retelling of this series from any (and possibly every) other perspective. Bella seen from the outside may be scarier than anyone else in the story.
Ho-ly Celestia. I can’t decide what makes me more upset: that the author actually thought this was anything resembling good writing, or that Bella is clearly suffering from mental issues and refuses to do anything about it. I’ve had two siblings go through depressed and suicidal phases, so anything remotely resembling either tends to put me on edge.
4813162
Midnight Sun is a half-finished draft of the first book from Edward's perspective, but I doubt that's what you're looking for. And, yeah. Believe it or not, Bella's behavior gets even scarier in a few of the later chapters.
4813175
Hoo, boy. You are NOT going to like this book.
Man. Man. UGH.