In Which We Return To Rapistville
So there are months printed on blank pages to indicate the passing of time. It's not a terrible system, and when we learn what Bella's been feeling / doing, it actually makes sense as an indicator of blank time. So more points.
Charlie is giving Bella a hard time about her 4 months of moping and laying around. He even goes so far as to suggest therapy for her obvious depression or sending her to Florida to live with Renee. In self-defense, Bella decides to draft no-longer-friend Jessica into going to the movies in Port Angeles. Seems Bella has been neglecting her friends and Jessica is rather peeved. There's a nice bit of interaction between them, but it starts to become really manipulative, especially when Bella keeps prompting Jessica to gossip during the car ride and then tuning her out so Bella doesn't have to reveal any internal details or participate in this mock friendship. Jessica seems really happy to be on the mend with Bella for entirely non-selfish, non-psychopathic reasons and that makes Bella look like a real brute.
They go to the movies to see a zombie flick, but Bella freaks out at the similarities in the movie's monster dude vs heroine plot, has a bit of an episode and bails the theater. After explaining it away as fear, the two girls walk down the long, dark block to hit a Mickey D's.
And here.. things go a little wonky.
Bella sees a group of guys outside a bar and flashes back to her last trip to Port Angeles when Edward saved her from Rapistville. The group of guys in the dim night inspire her to try and recreate that wonderful moment, over the entirely reasonable protests of Jessica. The inspiration for this moment is difficult to grasp from the text, it seems like Meyer had an idea for Bella and tossed her into a situation. Anyway, Luckily for Bella the guys turn out to be of the non-rapey variety, but it still sparks a psychotic break in Bella's fragile mind (at least that's how I read it) where she imagines Edward verbally reminding her that she promised not to do crazy, self-destructive things. You remember? The promise she sort of agreed to while he had her in an emotional tailspin while he was dumping her in the woods and leaving her there to die? Because those sorts of promises hold up in vampire court, I guess. Bella continues to sort of hang around the confused barflies to hear more of her mind-Edward give her grief about what she's doing, then goes to eat with an angry and confused Jessica.
Jessica drops Bella off and that seems to pretty much end Bella's only human to human relationship in her peer group. Sorry, Jessica! I sort-of liked you. Bella then monologues about how she now feels like her mind has cleared. Which is exactly the opposite diagnosis I'd give in my non-professional opinion.
SumUp: C-
So Bella is clinically depressed and going through Edward withdraw. She discovers that by putting herself in harm's way she can dredge up a mental image of him to give her a hard time, which thrills her and settles the jitters and jonsing.
What isn't wrong with this scenario? Once again the relationship between Edward and Bella is clearly framed in entirely unhealthy, drug addiction terms. Worse, Bella has now learned how to trick herself into getting an Edward-rush by acting suicidal. The best part is that this imaginary, methadone version of Edward is even less emotionally supportive than the real version. This is Bella's made-up version of Edward and he's essentially bossy and condescending. I didn't know how this relationship could be any less healthy, guess I should have turned my imagination to the fertile fields of psychiatric medicine. The internal debate Bella has about what's going on is so far out there that I had to read it repeatedly to understand what she was going on about because it really seemed like Edward showed up out of nowhere to protect her. Or at least whisper to her from the shadows. When I realized she was having a breakdown, I had to go back to the theater part of the chapter to start over to try and track this mental crash. Add to this Bella's blatant exploitation of Jessica's dwindling friendship and I'm stuck really not liking our main character while being worried about her sanity.
I wanted to connect Bella's actions to the classic stages of grief or 12 steps for addiction, but sadly they don't line up enough to be amusing. I also considered contacting some family members in the psychiatric/psychologist field to get an actual diagnosis, but I didn't want to admit to them that I was reading Twilight. So everybody loses.
The problem with this chapter is the combination of Bella's over the top reaction to Edward leaving with her new, psychotic "cure" and the disjointed way it's presented. I'm really baffled by the progression here, and I've no idea where this book is going.
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