Though all relationships have positive and negative aspects, the foundation of most healthy relationships are based on love for one another. However, Ward’s depiction of Leonie and Michael’s relationship showcases that there are relationships that are built on guilt, sadness, and despair. Though the relationship brought both Leonie and Michael happiness, their family history along with hot tempered personalities caused them to be extremely toxic for each other.
Family connections are a huge part of this novel, and from the very beginning it is obvious that both Michael and Leonie’s families don’t approve of their relationship, being one of the primary reasons for why they are problematic for each other. Ward depicts their relationship as negative enablement because neither of them are able to get the other person out of their drug, child neglect, and overall negative habits cycle. For instance, Michael using drugs and eventually producing his own crystal meth was not a positive influence on Leonie because people like him and Misty enabled her to want to use drugs more so that she could escape her reality and see her hallucinations with Given. The drugs also caused the negative feelings that Michael and Leonie had for each other to be put on the back burner and the positive feelings to come to light because they were in an alternate reality. As shown in chapter seven, “I close my eyes and ignore Given-not-Given, and think of Michael, real Michael” is a clear example of how Leonie romanticizes the connection between her and Michael when she is under the influence. Another huge example of how they negatively enable each other is shown through Jojo and Kayla. Both Leonie and Michael do have love for their children but because they are so consumed in their own drugs and sadness they aren’t able to give Jojo or Kayla much attention. Once it was mentioned in the book that Michael had actually gotten a tattoo for Jojo, I as the reader assumed that he would show him some care or affection, but Michael was too wrapped up in his own life.
Aside from the addiction and personality issues that are the root of many complexities in Leonie and Michael’s lives, the fact that Michael’s family was responsible for the death of Given was extremely disturbing for their relationship. The fact that Michael’s cousin killed Given and him and Leonie still progressed to dating showed a lot of character flaws in both Leonie and Michael. I would argue that Leonie felt guilty for this and used her relationship with Michael as a coping mechanism for his grief. Similarly, Michael used his own guilt on the behalf of his family and pursued a relationship with Leonie knowing that the circumstances were extremely odd and wrong.
I agree with most of the points in your assessment of Leonie and Michael’s questionable, codependent, and guilty relationship, but I would also go further in classifying Leonie’s love for Michael an obsession. Even before Leonie started taking drugs, she was infatuated with Michael and simply always wanted to be around him. When Leonie gets pregnant and Mam offers to abort it for her, Leonie decides that she wants to keep the baby because she would always have a piece of Michael within the baby, and they would be a happy family (Ward 158). She has this incessant need for everything in her life to be connected to Michael. She has her kids, her drug addiction, her satisfaction with not being a good mother, and it is okay as long as she has Michael. Her obsession grows to the point that she only has love for him, which is evident after she feels an immense amount of anger towards Kayla and Jojo and is seriously tempted to hurt both of them. However, after resisting her temptation and then seeing Michael, her “anger turns so quickly to love” that she is forced to stop and is only capable of being so captivated by his mere presence in her life (Ward 148). While their relationship is already inherently toxic because of the disturbing fact that Michael’s cousin is responsible for Leonie’s brother’s death, her absolute love for Michael, taking the form of obsession, amplifies the toxicity to an entirely new and unsettling level.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some of what you wrote here, especially your assertions about Leonie using Michael as a kind of coping mechanism after Given’s death, and I fully agree with Caitlyn’s addition about classifying Leonie’s love for Michael as an obsession. I want to compound on that point by reiterating a point I think was made clearer in the last third of the book: Leonie’s obsession with herself. We see it throughout the novel, but it isn’t until Mam tells Jojo, “[Leonie’s] love for herself and her love for Michael… it gets in the way. It confuse her” (234) that it is made plain. I think this becomes even more obvious in the way that she interacts with and/or beats her children and especially after Mam’s death. She practically flees her home and her children after her mother died, half-crazed with grief but also half-crazed with selfishness (though is it warranted after the death of her mother?). Her needs supersede the needs of her children and of her father in that moment as she tells herself “I can’t be a mother right now. I can’t be a daughter. I can’t remember,” (274). I think the final words of that chapter are the most telling about Leonie’s motherhood: she and Michael hold hands and “pretend at forgetting” (275): forgetting their children and their parents to live a life fully enmeshed with each other. I think Leonie is undoubtedly obsessed with Michael to a level of severe codependency, but I think it is important to note that there is an obsession with the self at play here as well, something that plays out in her drug use, especially while pregnant, and in her jealous, angry interactions that serve to further her own self-preservation.
ReplyDelete