The Dark Side

     The dark side: it's a line never to be crossed. It's that place that has so many warnings and barbed wire fences keeping you away from it, holding you back from becoming the unknown. But what if all of those warnings and barbed wire fences are just illusions? What if we constantly are drifting from one side to another, but we just don't notice those warning signs on our way there? In Crank by Ellen Hopkins, Kristina/Bree is a teenage girl who was once, and part of her still is, a smart, sensible girl who became addicted to Crystal Meth, referred to as "crank" or "the monster." She crossed over to a darker side by way of "Bree," her (kind of) alter-ego. Through Kristina/Bree, Ellen Hopkins conveys that we all pass from the dark side of our personality to our better side constantly.

     Ellen Hopkins uses her structure to show this. For example, in the poem "I was Aglow," she describes the plainer facts about a party on the left side, like "Soon the house filled/with friends,/ with acquaintances,/ with complete strangers." These are thoughts of a simple, stable girl. The thoughts of Kristina. Then, on the right side, she says, " and I wanted to get to know each and every one." These are clearly different. They are form the mind of a crazy, wild, audacious personality. Bree. She subconsciously moves from her dark side to her regular side quickly, without even thinking. Her dark side is a part of her. It's not like jumping out of a body and into another. It's you.

     Like Kristina, we all have this part of us. Though everyone believes that their dark side is so far off, so hidden away, it's not. It not just this dead part of us that you can never even imagine going to. It's a place we constantly drift towards without knowing, without noticing that we're doing it. The bad parts of our selves are not covered in glass. Our personalities don't work like that. It's not like one day, you break the glass and it all comes pouring out. It's always inside of us, unconfined, yet unnoticed sometimes. Remember that you don't need anything to get to this place- it's just a part of you. It shows in some more than others, but it's still not untouched. No matter how pure a heart is, it's still there, looming, waiting far you to cross that blurry border to have a thought, or an action, or even a word that is subtle, but everything about it is still dark.

The Inner You

In the book Crank, by Ellen Hopkins, the main character is born Kristina, the hard working honors student. But when she visits her drug-addicted dad, she soon starts identifying as Bree, a crazy, dangerous teenager. Bree does things that Kristina could never dream of. Pretty soon, Bree takes over completely, and Kristina has to struggle  to be heard. When I first meet Bree, I thought that she was just a phase, that Kristina would gain control once she went back home, to Reno. It soon becomes apparent that Bree is here to stay. This leaves me questioning whether or not it is possible to identify with two completely different personalities in one person.

When Kristina/Bree comes home from visiting her dad in Albuquerque, she, like the reader, is expecting Bree, along with her yearn for crystal meth ( or, as she calls it, the monster), to slowly fade away, and that Kristina will take over. But she finds that she can't keep a part of her quiet forever. Bree had become a part of Kristina, and she was here to stay. She says "Bree is the essence of me". What exactly does that mean? Does Kristina/Bree still identify at all as Kristina? Is it even possible to change that much in such a short period of time? I do believe that Bree is a major part of Kristina/Bree. But I also believe that Bree would not be able to function without Kristina. Right now, Bree is a cry for help. She thinks that Kristina has been to goody-goody for too long, and Bree has not had a chance to shine. But without Kristina, Bree has no reason to do all of the dangerous things she does. She does those dangerous things to show that everyone does not know Kristina/Bree as well as they thought she did. But Bree can't handle no one knowing her at all, so she still clings to Kristina. It is a symbiotic relationship, though they both refuse to recognize the other. Until they do, Bree/Kristina will never find peace.

To conclude, it is possible to discover a new part of yourself. Maybe you'll only find one. Or maybe you'll find multiple traits of yourself that don't exactly fit together, but still make you you. Still, I don't think it is healthy to find second you that is completely different. Kristina/Bree used Bree to do everything she wanted. But while doing that, she lost sight of Kristina. While she really identifies with Bree and Kristina, she only admits to herself as identifying as Bree. Had she found a balance to Bree and Kristina, she would have been able to be both in harmony. It is up to each of us to discover all parts of ourselves, but then find a way to make all of the puzzle pieces together.

No Going Back

Teen years are some of the biggest years of peoples' lives. Its a time where someone can figure out who they really are, and start to question the world around them. When you're just thirteen, you feel like you know so much, but really its just the beginning of a unfamiliar world where people start to question themselves.

I'm reading the book Crank, by Ellen Hopkins. The main character Kristina is going through a lot in her life. She just reunited with her dad, who she hadn't seen for eight years. While visiting her dad, she started doing crystal meth, and claims to have fell in love with the boy who introduced it to her. All of these things bring out a whole other side of Kristina. A side of her she calls Bree.

I think after reading this book for a bit of time, Kristina feels like she is changing, but calls this side of her Bree out of fear of what she could become.

Kristina starts describing things that used to be familiar as a threat. After coming back from her dads house, Kristina felt like she had been exposed to a whole other world, where she was Bree, and didn't understand how to adjust back to Kristina after all she'd seen and been through. I think this is relatable. I believe that we all go through something on our way to adulthood that makes us develop more as people, or question who we are and what we really want. Between the summer of fifth and sixth grade I went down to visit my family in Virginia. When I was younger I'd had all of these fond, almost magical, memories of going down to visit them. Only when I went down that summer, my family seemed different. I started looking at people in my family differently. I learned about peoples pasts more, things that drove them, and saw all of these people who I thought I knew all about as mysteries. It wasn't that they had changed as much as I had. I saw them clearer than I had before, and I understood then that we all have a past that makes people who they are, and people exist when you're not with them.

Once you've realized something like that theres no going back to how you've looked at something before. This can be connected to Kristina. When she was with her dad she found a part of herself that she didn't know there was before. When she went back to Reno, she had to figure out how to look at home after all she'd seen before that. She describes Bree of how she truly sees things, what she wants to be; she describes Kristina as what people want her to be.

All of this makes me wonder why Kristina calls herself Bree when she's doing bad things like drugs. It makes me wonder why Kristina just can't do the things she wants being herself. But in a way, it makes sense. By creating a part of her called Bree, she doesn't have to completely blame herself for the things she gets into. She could also still be holding onto Kristina because she doesn't want to let go, like she's afraid of what being Bree would do to her.

She talks about Bree as if she's being possessed by a monster, but I think Kristina is really just going through changes and feels a need to blame someone for it other then herself. She's old enough to know rights and wrongs, she just isn't sure yet what makes her happy, and we can all relate to wanting to experiment.