{"product_id":"please-stop-trying-to-leave-me-isbn-9780593686782","title":"Please Stop Trying to Leave Me","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn \"engrossing, affecting, and singular\" (\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e) debut novel about love, family, queerness, and losing your mind in the modern world.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile god is sending her signs through Instagram and Spotify demanding she break up with her girlfriend, Norma meets with a new therapist for one reason: she really needs to write again. With only one chapter missing in her manuscript, Norma is desperate to know if she needs to leave her girlfriend in order to write The Last Story. The new therapist diagnoses Norma with Depersonalization\/Derealization Disorder, but Norma isn’t having it. \u003ci\u003eIt’s just Oblivion. \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHaunted by SSRI side effects and life becoming less hazily fictional by the day, Norma has never felt crazier. Does anyone else see the world’s poorly crafted plotline? Like, who even wrote this story? Norma begins sharing her manuscript with her therapist, hoping to connect the dissociative dots once and for all—or at least enough so that Google ads stop giving her panic attacks. But soon Norma is questioning everything she’s ever believed about life, writing, and love. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then there’s Norma’s girlfriend, the one with a crack of light in her eyes. Could she be Oblivion’s antagonist, the manuscript’s savior? Or is she just a human? \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTold alternately through Norma's barely fictional fiction and her crackling stream of consciousness, \u003ci\u003ePlease Stop Trying To Leave Me\u003c\/i\u003e is an honest, comedic, horrifying, and heart-wrenching story about existing in today’s world, challenging all we’ve been taught about the distance between fiction and reality, sanity and insanity, mental illness and healing.\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eMs.\u003c\/i\u003e Most Anticipated Book of 2024: \"Debut, contemporary, queer AF.\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003ePlease Stop Trying to Leave Me\u003c\/i\u003e is a riveting, deeply funny, and acutely observed ride through the breaking down and rebuilding of self and connection. It’s a full sprint toward (and away from and back again) real love and meaning. Sharp and existential and devastating and queer.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Jules Ohman, author of \u003ci\u003eBody Grammar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003ePlease Stop Trying to Leave Me \u003c\/i\u003eis the most delightfully unhinged and chaotic novel I’ve read in years and I am here for every page, and more.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Chloe Caldwell, author of \u003ci\u003eWomen: A Novella\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003ePlease Stop Trying to Leave Me\u003c\/i\u003e is an electric, delirious novel about how art-making, romantic partnership, and trauma make fractals of the self. Alana Saab is an intoxicating stylist, pulling off a heady and meta debut that feels like clawing your way out of the belly of some monster, rib by rib, only to find that the monster is you. Deadpan and tender, \u003ci\u003ePlease Stop Trying to Leave Me \u003c\/i\u003eis a must-read for anyone who has ever white-knuckled their way through the wilderness of their own mind (it me).\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Ruth Madievsky, author of \u003ci\u003eAll-Night Pharmacy\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Audacious, innovative and utterly absorbing, this beautifully written debut novel feels like a new form of realism. Structured as a series of therapy sessions, it does what Samuel Beckett asked of the contemporary novel –“to find a form to accommodate the shape of the mess.” From overwhelming feelings of oblivion to climate crises and economic anxiety, here in a voice at once tender and funny, unsettled and deeply observant, is the texture of our age brought vividly into focus.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Laurie Sheck, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Willow Grove\u003c\/i\u003e, a Pulitzer Prize finalist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"After a mental health crisis, a young woman seeks treatment in an attempt to reinhabit the outside world, and herself, again. . . . Acerbic, tenderhearted, and clever. . . . A well-crafted spiral of a story with hope at its center.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A lesbian woman grapples with her literary ambitions and deteriorating mental health in Saab’s engrossing debut. . . . [An] affecting and singular exploration of a woman’s attempts to live and write with mental illness.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eAlana Saab is a literary writer and award-winning screenwriter. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from The New School, a Masters Degree in Psychology from Columbia University and her Bachelors from New York University in the Phenomenology of Storytelling. She lives in New York with her partner. \u003ci\u003ePlease Stop Trying to Leave Me \u003c\/i\u003eis her first novel.THE STUDY OF OBLIVION\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eseven weeks since breakdown\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow long is this thing?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s two hours.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIs it always going to be this long?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo, this is just a consultation to see if it makes sense for us to work together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWork together? Like collaborate?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike if it makes sense for me to take you on as a client.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOhhh, so this is like a pitch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist looks at me and blinks twice. I explain further:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike you’re an agent deciding if you want my manuscript and maybe by the end of this, you’ll sign me.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe smiles, but by the way her mouth shifts, it almost looks like she’s just eaten something sour. She says, where would you like to start?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith oblivion. Obviously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist says, what’s oblivion? She says this nonchalantly as if oblivion was a dog I had during my childhood who I should not still be mourning at the age of twenty-seven.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI say, well, let’s begin with its etymology.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOblivion. Noun. Fourteenth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eState of forgetting, forgetfulness, loss of memory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDirectly from Latin. Oblivionem. Forgetfulness; a being forgotten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA being. Forgotten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAccording to the Online Etymology Dictionary:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOblivion is supposed to have originally stemmed from the breakdown of ob- and lēvis. Together meaning: to even out, smooth over. However, linguists (“de Vaan and others”) say:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea semantic shift from to be smooth to to forget is not very convincing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis quote is followed up with:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHowever no better explanation has emerged.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlso from the Online Etymology Dictionary:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor sense of oblivion’s evolution, compare oblivious and obliterate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI never understood the relationship linguistics is trying to draw between these words, so let’s continue:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI began calling it oblivion when I was twenty-four. Three years ago, and long after it began. Of course, the word had already been famously used in John Green’s novel The Fault in Our Stars, but I didn’t get the word from there. In fact, when I learned that oblivion had been used in that book, I almost changed the name. But then I didn’t, because I’d been calling it oblivion for so long, and I’m lazy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe doesn’t laugh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnyways,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOblivion began when I was much younger. Four is my earliest memory of it. And it is the second memory I have of my entire life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy first memory is me at two and a half. Looking at my father and saying:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI. Two a half.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI don’t remember why I started calling it by the name oblivion three years ago, but that’s the only word that came to mind. And I needed something to refer to it as instead of just that thing that happens to me, so I settled on oblivion. And so far:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo better explanation has emerged.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat said, my new therapist seems to have one and will tell me in approximately forty minutes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI think I was writing at my desk when the word came to me, but I can’t really remember. Oblivion tends to mess with my memory. It messes with a lot of things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike my life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou see, oblivion didn’t creep in, like most things do. It didn’t slide under the weathering foundation of my life, dripping, accumulating, like a slow leak. There are mixed metaphors of water and gas here, but it wasn’t, isn’t, and won’t ever be an element nor a property. In a similar respect, it can’t be found on the periodic table or located in a lab. However, it can be, with language, pointed to, like a person with no eyes trying to point at a flying, silent, bird. In this way, it also cannot be pointed to, but still I can try. This is one of my many attempts:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA tarot reader once walked with me along Henry Hudson Parkway. She told me that animals, after they are traumatized, or chased to be hunted down, or if a dog does something “embarrassing” (these are all forms of trauma according to her), shake their bodies viciously for a moment as if trying to shed themselves of the memory. Or, she also offered, as if they are moving the trauma through their animal bodies so it doesn’t create blockages in consciousness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnother man who was not a friend but someone who wanted to have sex with me (though he explained it as wanting to hold me) once said he believed consciousness lived not in the brain but in our fascia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat’s the first time I heard the word.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe word fascia. Not oblivion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ewhat is fascia? About 90,000,000 results (0.65 seconds)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFascia is a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place. Fascia has nerves that make it almost as sensitive as skin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohns Hopkins says related searches are hypnosis, Chinese medicine, and imagery (whatever that means).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFascia, like the brain, confuses scientists and doctors, so they often don’t talk about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy second memory is of the world emptying. I was in my parents’ bedroom when it happened. I’m not sure where they were, but I know I was walking to the bathroom. I blinked my eyes and then they stayed shut. And in that moment when my eyelids wouldn’t open, I saw my family home. My parents, in the middle of whatever they were doing—washing dishes, fixing a light bulb, fighting in the kitchen—suddenly vanished. Where they were, a haze for a moment, a poof, and then just and only the background. The room, empty. Then I was in my sister’s room and she vanished too. Then the vision zoomed out to my town, and everyone there was suddenly gone. Then it zoomed out again, like a camera lens. All the humans in the country, vanished. Zoom out again. Then all the humans in all the continents, gone. All the homes once so violently lived in were empty. Only place and nature left. I was still unable to open my eyes from the blink when the homes disappeared too. Then every structure on earth, small or large, gone too. Then the animals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen the vision zoomed out for a fourth time, and I saw the entirety of the spherical earth with obsidian space in the background. From there, I watched as the grass and trees disappeared; the water, dried. The once green-and-blue earth, which I had only ever seen in photos, was gray and desolate. The earth became a bald mass. Not desolated by existence but just that every trace of life disappeared from the planet as if it never existed in the first place. All color drained. All life, void. Then the blackness came. The sun I knew, disappeared too, burning itself once and for all. In the utter blackness of space, time ceased to exist; there was nothing to keep time. There was no sun. Then the vision zoomed out again, and I saw our whole solar system. There, every planet, not just earth, was devoid of any life. Though still spinning. Spinning because that’s all there was left to do. Then the vision zoomed out one final time, and I saw a chunk of the universe with its hundreds of galaxies, and in each of those hundreds of galaxies, only empty planets spinning and spinning and spinning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOblivion confuses me, so I have to talk about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnlike scientists or doctors, I have nothing to prove.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOblivion has gotten much worse recently.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhich is why I began to see this new therapist. I mean you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I say much worse, I mean I used to ebb in and out of oblivion. Now I’m just stuck here. And I can’t stop crying.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen my eyes finally opened, which they did only a second after they closed (it all happened so fast and yet simultaneously infinitely), I came down from space and found myself back in my parents’ room. I continued my walk to the bathroom. I had to pee. As I sat on the toilet, I couldn’t get the vision out of my mind. And unlike an animal, I didn’t shake the memory off; I didn’t know I needed to. Instead, I sat on the cold porcelain, unable to feel the chill on my bottom, and I thought about the spinning planets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf my family didn’t have money, I surely would be in a state institution right now. If my family didn’t have money, I also wouldn’t have been able to take time off from my part-time job after oblivion took over. I also, for the past four years, wouldn’t have been able to only have a part-time job at a nonprofit, which provides me with enough income to pay a ninth of my rent while I pursue my dream of becoming a writer, if my family did not have money. In summary, if my family did not have money, I would not be able to pursue any type of dream or have the luxury of a jobless mental breakdown, because this is the type of world we live in. Sidenote: my parents are immigrants who still believe in the American Dream.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy girlfriend doesn’t like oblivion very much. From the look on her face right now, neither does my new therapist. However, my old therapist liked it very much. Sometimes I think he even loved me for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist says, does your relationship with your old therapist remind you of a relationship from your past?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I say love, I mean sometimes my old therapist looked at me like he wanted to take my clothes off. Which means sometimes he looked at me like that guy who told me about fascia. Which means sometimes he looked at me like every other guy I’ve ever met. Every. Other. Guy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy old therapist also told me oblivion was my connection to the divine. Which means, according to my new therapist, my old therapist could have made oblivion much worse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI tell my new therapist, maybe the relationship was reminiscent of something, but I can’t remember. I am forgetful. Remember?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor years, I thought of my second memory. And in this way my second memory became my third and fourth and seventh and hundredth and thousandth memory. I still hadn’t shaken it off. Why? Because I was not an animal. But really why? Well, because when the last lonely human sacrificed herself to the elements, when the last flower had wilted into dried soil, when the last animal still fought against death, limbs kicking into the air, despite knowing there was nothing to live for (of course, I didn’t see all of this, in my mind they just poofed, this is me hyperbolizing because that’s what people do), the planets still turned. I watched them spin for nothingness. And while the empty planets spun, the galaxies did not mourn the lives lost on their children of mass. They did not cry. They did not feel sadness. The universe still existed despite life, within it, not. Still, you may be wondering why this bothered me so much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou see, when every person, place, thing, even light, even time, disappeared in front of my closed eyes, I saw the emptying of existence, life completely disappearing, except one thing remained. I was still there. I didn’t join the rest of life in the act of vanishing, the consolation of not existing together, and through that togetherness, the joint venture of it all, somehow, somewhere, existing. Despite trying, I couldn’t make myself disappear like the rest of you. I was trapped there alone, watching the bald planets in every lonely galaxy spin for nothingness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist repeats: so where would you like to start?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI need to finish my manuscript.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ehow to finish a manuscript: About 23,100,000 results (0.71 seconds)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNY Book Editors: Finish Your Manuscript! 8 Productivity Hacks for Writers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. Just Start Writing. Don’t let something as silly as writer’s block stop you from actually writing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2. Write a Lot. I mean, a lot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3. Give Yourself a Deadline.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist says, can you say more?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo I say, well I had a mental breakdown and now I’m stuck in oblivion, which wouldn’t be so much of a problem if I could still write, but I haven’t been able to because oblivion just keeps deepening and there’s this pain in my chest too, which isn’t what oblivion usually is, so I came to you, I begin to finish my point, because I need to finish my manuscript and my girlfriend found your studies online. She said you’ve done studies on people who think the world is unreal. And she said that sounds like me, because when oblivion takes over, I say, nothing is real. Like literally nothing except me and I created this whole world and I’m stuck in it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist doesn’t say anything, so I continue:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo yeah, I’m stuck in oblivion, kind of like a character is stuck in a book but the character also wrote the book but now they can’t escape from the book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist doesn’t move. She’s frozen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd that’s all fine, but an agent is waiting to look at my manuscript and I can’t finish the last story in my manuscript, which is a story about my girlfriend. And I can’t finish it, because I don’t know how our story ends.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAre you writing a memoir?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo. I write fiction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI pause and realize how quickly I’m talking, but I can’t stop talking because it’s the only thing that pacifies the pain in my chest. I continue: But if you’re asking about genre, which I think you are, I don’t know what genre my book is because I haven’t finished it yet. It may be a psychodrama. Or a horror story. Or a disillusionment plot (a change in worldview from positive to negative). Or an educato plot (change in worldview from negative to positive). Or a war story. Or a woman’s story. Or a mockumentary. Or maybe science fiction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI wasn’t asking about genre, but it seems like you’re concerned about the genre?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis should be a statement, but she says it like a question, which makes me want to itch my neck.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy new therapist continues speaking very slowly: if it is fiction, then why are you writing a story about your girlfriend?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOblivion clouds the room in a haze and I wonder why I made this lady and her tan couch and her awful textile pillows. But mostly, I wonder why I created her to be wearing ballet flats. And why, if I created her, I’m so scared of her. And why, if I created this whole world, it seems so terrifying. Then I remember I’m trapped within it, and I don’t know a way out. And even if I did know a way out, I’d be alone on the other side anyways. I think all of this but I say:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo think of yourself like my writing professor.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304716783845,"sku":"NP9780593686782","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593686782.jpg?v=1767734883","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/please-stop-trying-to-leave-me-isbn-9780593686782","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}