My Most Valuable Part from Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen is the last chapter when we finally discover the reason behind the name of the book. The story begins in the year of 1967, Susanna, the author and narrator with only eighteen years old is diagnosed by her psychiatrist with borderline personality disorder after attempting suicide by overdosing on pills. Immediately after, she voluntarily commits herself to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, Massachusetts. Over the next two years, Kaysen confronts her illness, through her thoughts; line by line.
During her stay in McLean, Susanna speaks about her relationship with her high school English teacher. He takes her to New York to visit the Frick Museum, where she expects that he will try to kiss her. Suddenly, Susanna found herself contemplating a painting about a girl ignoring apparently her music teacher. She felt that this girl of the painting was looking at her trying to warning her about something. Then, Kaysen imagines that the girl warns her not to pursue the relationship with her teacher “Wait,” “wait! Don’t go!” were the words that Susanna thought she heard coming out of the girl's mouth, but she didn’t listen to her.
Sixteen years later, Susanna visits the museum again with a new boyfriend. She returns to the painting but interprets it quite differently. The painting is titled Girl, Interrupted at Her Music. When I read this part, I never imagined that I would feel so identified with the author. In my opinion, people see a certain situation depending on the stage of life they are living. Time and experiences make you see life with another perspective; that’s why Susanna interprets the same painting in two different ways. I think she learned that most of the time when we are young, we don’t have enough maturity to face the problems, and that may lead us to make mistakes.
Another thing that caught my attention was that the name of the painting described her feelings about her experience at McLean Hospital. "Girl, Interrupted at Her Music" “Just as my life has been,” says Susanna. Kaysen tears up as she recalls how her own life was interrupted by illness and hospitalization. Although Susanna was very young and had a whole life ahead of her, nothing prevented her life from being interrupted by a mental illness.
Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it very addictive. I think the most important lesson I learned from Girl, Interrupted was that crazy people is not different from normal people and that we all deserve second chances. Anyone who has ever had an obsession, felt impulses to be drastic over something, felt a bit out of place, or ever had in the back of their mind the suspicion that they might be just a little bit crazy, should read the book. Mental illness is a very real thing, and the course of treatment is crucial to a person's development I have always considered great that people write about their experiences, whether good or bad.
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