Blog Tour - Guest Post: How It Ends by Catherine Lo

How It Ends

by Catherine Lo
June 7, 2016

304 pages

Goodreads  Indigo

Goodreads Summary:

There are two sides to every story.

It’s friends-at-first-sight for Jessie and Annie, proving the old adage that opposites attract. Shy, anxious Jessie would give anything to have Annie’s beauty and confidence. And Annie thinks Jessie has the perfect life, with her close-knit family and killer grades. They're BFFs…until suddenly they're not.

Told through alternating points of view, How It Ends is a wildly fast but deeply moving read about a friendship in crisis. Set against a tumultuous sophomore year of bullying, boys and backstabbing, the novel shows what can happen when friends choose assumptions and fear over each other.

 

Guest Post

I’ll never forget the first time I heard one of my students say, “I don’t have girl friends. I’d rather hang out with guys. Girls are too much drama.” The years melted away and I could see myself saying those same things as a teen. I’d been burned by a few friends by then – snarky comments and cruel rumours, the betrayal of confidences, phone calls that were never returned as a close friend turned her back on me…I was done with trying to navigate the rocky waters of female friendship. I had one close friend who was a girl, and I kept my distance from all the others. I didn’t want the drama, I told myself.

It took years before I fully trusted other girls. I had a lot of female acquaintances after high school, but tended to keep them at arm’s length. We’d go out together, trade funny stories and typical complaints about our lives and relationships and jobs, but we never confided the deep stuff. I never told them about my doubts and fears and frustrations. I never admitted my failures, or exposed myself in any way that might open me up to the kinds of betrayals I’d experienced in high school. I thought that the best way to protect myself was to never show vulnerability.

I was wrong.

Years later, I suffered my first intense bout of depression. In counselling, I unloaded all those feelings and worries I’d been bottling up for years. And you know what my counsellor recommended? Friends. “You need to let go of your insecurities around trusting people and confide in close friends,” he told me. “We all need connection.”

So I gathered my courage, chose a handful of my female friends, and told them about the struggles I’d been experiencing. And that one small display of vulnerability had a miraculous effect. Instead of judging me, as I’d feared, my friends rallied around me and shared their own stories. The walls we’d built between us started to come down, and our friendships deepened. For the first time in a very long time, I experienced how life-changing close friendships can be.

So when my student expressed her frustration with other girls her age, I felt her pain and I knew exactly where she was coming from. But I also knew that there was much more to the story. Yes, female friendships in high school can be fraught with drama and betrayal, but that drama has more to do with high school and less with the value of friendships among girls. In high school, we’re still learning about relationships. We make mistakes, we hurt people, and we get hurt in return. But the solution is not to run away from female friendships, like I did. Don’t let a few bad experiences scare you away, I told her. Because true friendship is worth the risk.

Thank you for sharing this with us today Catherine! I think we can all relate in one way or another. I, myself have felt some anxiety over the years about having girl friends. I got along with guys more often than girls. But the few close girl friends I have now are totally worth it :)

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