Because of you I am afraid

Each of us faced it. We all have been teenagers. It is one of the most important parts of our lives – it is just that very time to become an adult. But this time is so hard. It causes lots of problems – that is what everybody knows exactly. How to deal with them? No one knows.

The main character of the book “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson is a teenage girl. Her name is Melinda. “She has entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude and she does not have anyone to seat with.” She cannot tell anyone about her problems because she cannot trust anybody. Is there something special about her problem or it is just behavior of the teenager who wants to get attention?

Reading the book we are making the acquaintance of the people who Melinda is surrounded by: her parents, new friends, ex-friends and teachers. They all try to help us to find out what is wrong with her, what she conceals from everybody and dying to tell someone at the same time.

Melinda’s parents seem to have too much to deal with to pay attention to their daughter. I suppose it is the common problem of the majority of modern families. They do not want to make any effort to understand their child while the kid is just in need of parents’ attention because the parents are the closest people we have in our life.

On the other hand parents are the people of a different generation so it might be hard to explain teenage problems to them because life is changing so fast. Who else can be that person that will help you? A friend. Your best friend who seems to know everything about you, who you have known since your childhood. The only problem about it is in fact that your friend is a teenager too and he might have lots of prejudices.
Can it really be so that Melinda will never tell anybody her big secret which she suffers from?  Teachers are my last hope. Mr. Freeman, the teacher of Art attracted my attention. His name clearly represents him. He gets on well with all his students and seems to be the only one who understands that there is something wrong with Melinda. Something that she hides. He tries to make her to believe in herself, and he has had a success. “If he thinks I can do it, then I’ll try one more time”, - Melinda thought. Mr. Freeman “doesn’t care how many mistakes Melinda makes” and this is exactly what the girl needed. She wanted someone to believe in her, someone who would be interested in her life, someone she would be able to trust.

The Melinda’s story represents the life of the modern teenager. What happened with her could have happened with everyone. Everyone may face misunderstanding at that age. This is the problem most teenagers or young people might be facing around the world.  

So as you see, it’s very difficult to be young nowadays as indeed it always was. But you can only be young once and some wonderful things can happen to you only when you’re young. So it’s better to enjoy youth while it lasts.