Invitation to the Blues

Invitation to the Blues (2018) Roan Parrish (Small Change)

This story is not for everyone.

So there I was, working in my younger brother’s sandwich shop to make rent after moving out of my parents’ house, where I’d gone to temporarily lie low when I was released from the hospital I ended up in after trying to kill myself.

No, it’s not the start of a grim joke. Just my grim fucking life.

Jude Lucen is back home, trying to put his life back together, and trying not to miss the pieces of his life that were good, back in Boston.

He’s also trying very hard not to want Faron, the beautiful, graceful man who works at Small Change.

The thing about this story is it spoke a lot of truths, and they were hard.

Usually, I didn’t like being touched. It didn’t feel good and it made me aware of a body I’d rather forget.

every day when I was okay shimmered with a threat just out of view. I’d stop in the middle of doing something and check in: did I still feel okay? I did. I would reassure myself, See! You are still okay!

But once I began to look down and check that the ground was still flat, every step felt like the one that might suddenly slope downhill. And even when it didn’t, the edge felt like it was growing nearer and each day became more and more vertiginous.

Depression and anxiety were self-abnegating and self-centering at the same time. It was so easy to believe that because my feelings were huge, they exerted a force beyond me. It was so easy to forget that even though I was always being forced to think about myself, not everyone else did.

“You don’t want to choose,” he said. “Choosing feels hard because it could always be a mistake. And if it’s a mistake and you chose it, then it’s your fault. You don’t want it to be your fault. You already feel guilty enough. You don’t want to feel any more.”

I’d worried about taking (any other medications), convinced the slightest change to my chemical cocktail would send me spiraling.

So, yeah.

All those truths.

But it was a good story underneath those heavy truths. Faron wants to convince Jude he is worthy of love. Jude trying to get beyond his past and what he’d come to believe about himself.

And Faron himself has his own issues, most of which are in the background of Jude’s, butonce Jude puts himself back together, he tries his best to be there for Faron when he needs him.

This is a boinking book, but it’s a whole lot more than that.

Publisher : Monster Press
Rating: 8/10

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