Forget Me Not

“Instead, in my dream, I extend my fingers and you extend them right back. I reach out to touch you, to prove to myself that you’re still real, but before I can get to you, before I can feel your skin on mine, you turn to fog in my grip and waft away like the wind.”

In the opening of the novel, the fact that Claire is constantly thinking about Natalie is established by her recurrent dream where she looks in the mirror and becomes her dead sister. The feeling that her memories of Natalie are indistinct is conveyed by this description of her “turn[ing] to fog” while her desire to hold on to her is shown by her reaching out.

“Have you ever heard of exposure therapy?…Avoiding the thing you’re afraid of only gives it more power.”

Claire’s friend Ryan really does care for her and wants her to confront the broken feelings she has inside her, reflecting The Negative Impacts of Childhood Neglect. He tries throughout the novel to put a positive spin on difficult things and suggests that perhaps returning to Claxton will help diffuse Claire’s negative feelings about the past and seeing her mother, both of which create trepidation.

“‘But I don’t need her here.’

I clench my jaw, a familiar hurt bubbling up from the depths of my chest as this entire encounter calls to mind the summer they separated. The way my mother would routinely retreat into her bedroom, the quiet click of the door as I stood still in the hall. Her seeping soft sobs I would pretend not to hear…The way I immediately started to curl in on myself while Natalie did the opposite and started to lash out.”

This shows how Annie has hurt Claire by avoiding her emotions and pushing Claire away, reinforcing The Negative Impacts of Childhood Neglect. It also shows how the child Claire learned to “curl in on herself” and hide her feelings, too, mimicking her mother while teenage Natalie responds with anger. Annie’s seeming rejection, which she thinks is protection, drives Claire throughout the novel and is part of the source of her shame.