‘Turtles All the Way Down’ by John Green, is a book about surviving life through storms. It shows its protagonist and sole narrator, Aza, who talks about her experience with the world. As Aza enters a thought spiral resulting from her mental illness, OCD, she disconnects from her friends and mother. The disorder worsens her anxiety and makes her terrible company to others. Aza meets Davis Pickett, and though she does not get the perfect happy ending, she begins a journey of self-healing.
The Thoughts that Haunts Us
Supposedly everyone has them—you look out from over a bridge or whatever and it occurs to you out of nowhere that you could just jump. And then if you’re most people, you think, Well, that was a weird thought, and move on with your life. But for some people, the invasive can kind of take over, crowding out all the other thoughts until it’s the only one you’re able to have, the thought you’re perpetually either thinking or distracting yourself from.
The statement above talks about the complexity of the human thought process. Aza acknowledges that everyone has haunting thoughts. Though we forget them, some people do not. As Aza had mental health issues, she knew what it was like to have constant negative thoughts.
You need to check for infection; just check it so we can calm down, and then fine, okay, you excuse yourself to the bathroom and slip off the Band-Aid to discover that there isn’t blood, but there might be a bit of moisture on the bandage pad. You hold the Band-Aid up to the yellow light in the bathroom, and yes, that definitely looks like moisture.
Turning off a constant stream of negative thoughts is something many humans have, but for someone like the sixteen-year-old Aza, there was no such blessing. The statement above is a scene that occurs in her mind.
Aza became anxious that the wound in her hand was infected. Though others might have shrugged off the idea, she could not, as her obsession with bacterial infections got the best of her. On losing the fight against the haunting thought of disease, Aza rushed to the bathroom to check if her hand was already necrosing, but to her surprise, it was not. However, she somehow convinced herself she was infected because she saw moisture.
The Reality of Life
But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.
Life is a complex journey that everyone undertakes. It has twists and turns and is far from perfection. Aza’s statement above talks about the complexities of living. She realizes that no matter how one sees the world through perfect lenses, they are always never the ones to tell their life’s story; this made Aza anxious. She was scared others would see her negatively if she got too close and opened up.
The Solace In Isolation
Last night I lay on the frozen ground, staring up at a clear sky only somewhat ruined by light pollution and the fog produced by my own breath—no telescope or anything, just me and the wide-open sky—and I kept thinking about how sky is a singular noun, as if it’s one thing. But the sky isn’t one thing. The sky is everything. And last night, it was enough.
Davis Pickett was a young boy thrown into a brutal world. Though he had everything anyone could want, he knew he could never get parental love. With a father charged with fraud and a dead mother, he had no one else besides his brother. In his isolation, he makes the statement above to show how silence gave him some semblance of peace.
Love
When observation fails to align with a truth, what do you trust—your senses or your truth? The Greeks didn’t even have a word for blue. The color didn’t exist to them. Couldn’t see it without a word for it. I think about her all the time. My stomach flips when I see her. But is it love, or just something we don’t have a word for?
Unsure if he was falling for Aza, Davis makes the statement above. After meeting her, he found some semblance of the love his father never showed him. Like other characters, Davis was unsure if his feelings were real.
When you’re on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who’s doing it ever talks about anything else. I have no interest in dating.
Love can be a tricky path to thread, and relationships can be overwhelming. Aza knew this and made up her mind not to enter a relationship. Her anxiety ruined her interaction with others for most of her life, and she knew entering an entanglement with someone would worsen her situation.
A Real World, A Fake Life
You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.
After doubting herself for a long time, Aza faced a new challenge. She started doubting her existence. With never-ending thoughts of anxiety and fear, the young girl began to believe she was nothing more than some character in a story. It took the effort of everyone around her to make her see she was real.
Pain
Fourteen days since the mess began. My life isn’t worse, exactly—just smaller. Look up long enough and you start to feel your infinitesimality. The difference between alive and not—that’s something. But from where the stars are watching, there is almost no difference between varieties of alive, between me and the newly mown grass I’m lying on right now. We are both astonishments, the closest thing in the known universe to a miracle.
Pain is a universal feeling everyone experiences. It shapes human interaction and society. After Russell Pickett’s disappearance, Davis felt pain. Though his father had not shown much emotion to him, he still felt the loss of not having a guardian. Davis made the statement above in pain.
After a while he says, I have to go, and you say, goodbye, and he says, goodbye, Aza, and no one ever says goodbye unless they want to see you again.
Saying goodbye is a painful experience many people do not want to experience, but Aza knew she could not avoid it. With Russell’s body discovery, Davis and his brother, Noah, lost the wealth they had. While leaving for Colorado, Davis said goodbye, but Aza knew no one leaves when love is involved.
There are about a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way—one for every person who ever lived, more or less. I was thinking about that beneath the sky tonight, unseasonably warm, as good a showing of stars as one gets around here. Something about looking up always makes me feel like I’m falling.
Davis had no one to talk to, no one to hold, and no one to run to. He felt caged in his life and felt like the walls of wealth made him feel alone. In his pain, he wrote the above speech.
