Just Listen is the memoir of a young girl, Jenna Young who lives with her father and his girlfriend, Shelly. Shelly has three children of her own and together, the four young children try to survive an extremely volatile atmosphere at home. Jenna’s father and his thirty eight year old partner are thoroughly inebriated most of the time. When Shelly gets into one of her alcoholic rages she wrecks havoc, destroying furniture and trying to physically harm Jenna’s father. Jenna then has no option but to dial 911 and seek shelter with the police. This only serves to further enrage her father and his partner. To make matters worse, Jenna’s father sodomises her on a regular basis. A terrified Jenna is too scared to say anything. She tries her colossal best to ward off her father during these night time rituals but he placates her with, “I made you. You are part of me.” Her cries for help go unheard. Is it any wonder then that this young girl’s life is so messed up! With no one to turn to, Jenna learns to cope the only way she can. She takes to slashing her wrists repeatedly in an effort to blanket one pain with another. Becoming anorexic is another result of the tumultuous conditions she lives in.
One day, Jenna tortured and confused, meets with a road accident and is taken to the Accident and Emergency room at a local hospital. There a nurse on duty sees the slashes on her arm. Jenna is admitted for psychiatric treatment and thus begins another journey. It is a slow and painful recovery process which takes her eight horrendous years in and out of the psychiatry wards but at last she begins to realise that she is the victim and not the perpetrator of all that has happened to her. She begins to deal with depression, a borderline personality disorder and her severe post traumatic stress disorder by writing her thoughts down. These take the form of journal entries or poems.
Just Listen is book about realization. It is not only the story of a young woman’s struggle with herself and her environment but also a cathartic process where the very act of putting down the words on paper appears to cleanse the soul of this young woman. The author takes her reader through corridors of sheer pain; sometimes there is light visible at the end of a light, but more often, it just dissolves into more pain and heartache; but in the end, this woman survives and comes out a winner. She reaches out to hundreds of other people who are going through similar pain and implores them to speak out. For the rest of us out there, she just wants us to listen.
This 248 page book is an interesting read. It requires some professional editing and proof reading which I think would vastly improve the quality and thereby the sales. The work is available as an ebook on Kindle through Amazon. I am happy to recommend this e book.
Product Details
Author : Jenna Young
Genre: Memoir
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 255 KB
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: English
ASIN: B003NX7LU8
