Sat, 20 Apr, 2024

I Was Here

By Sweekriti Gautam

Picture Courtesy: hafr.blog.hu

“I Was Here” is a novel written by Gayle Forman. It has a perfect blend of mystery, tragedy and romance. It is a novel based on teenage life.

Cody and Meg were best friends and used to share every single thing about each other's life. They were very close and did everything together. So when Meg drank a bottle of industrial strength and committed suicide in a motel room, Cody was shocked beyond words. She couldn’t wrap her head around this incident. Meg always seemed very cheerful and friendly towards her. Why would she commit suicide? Cody went to Meg’s college and went straight up to her dorm room to collect her things. There she met Meg's roommate. She found out Meg had been hiding a lot of things from her. She found out that a man had broken her heart very recently. Cody thought maybe that was the reason why she committed suicide. However, later on, she meets this man and finds out that he is an incredible person and falls in love with him. After searching her room more, Cody finds an encrypted file in Meg’s computer. She starts to suspect that it might have been murder and not suicide. After searching her web history, she finds out that Meg had been looking up the subject of suicide a lot. She had been talking to people online and she might have had the idea that suicide was a “cool” thing to do. After a lot of searching and mystery solving, Cody finally finds out that Meg was suffering from depression and family illness which she had been hiding from everyone. That was why she decided to commit suicide.

The evolution and development that Cody's character goes through due to Meg's suicide are quite spectacular. It just goes to show that experiences in life is what makes a person mature and not age. This novel focuses on the fact that suicide is indeed a brave decision to make, which sounds weird but by stepping in the shoes of the victim of depression, we can sort of understand why they make that huge decision.