An Analysis Of Karen Der Zee's A Secret Sorrow

Reading the excerpt from Karen Van Der Zee’s book “A Secret Sorrow” brings to mind a person who is very dear to me. I’m sure there are many people out there who may know someone in the same predicament, so this scenario is by no means unique. However, it is very close to my heart and shows that sometimes there can be happy endings, or that fairy tales can come true. Growing up I always had a lot of friends, some would move, or change schools, and eventually, over time, we would lose contact with each other. However, two friends stayed constant over the years. You might say we grew up together, and even though we no longer live near each other, we remain very close to this day. During our high school years, we had a lot of different …show more content…
We brought our husbands, and she brought her boyfriend. A few hours into the evening we started to notice there was a lot of tension between my friend and her boyfriend, and eventually I heard part of their argument that I'd never forget. The words she spoke gave a revelation into why after all these years she remained single. It made my heart hurt to think of the pain we must have caused when we jokingly called her “Little Ms. Spinster.” My friend, like Faye in Karen Van Der Zee’s book, told him, “We can’t have the kind of life you want. I’m so afraid…you’ll be disappointed” (31). However, unlike Faye, she didn’t leave it at that; she also hollered “I can’t have children.” Todd was a little shocked and just stood there with that deer in the headlight look. He eventually gained his composure but decided he needed to leave. Later that night we decided the girls needed to get together and have a discussion over what we had just heard and witnessed. My friend finally told us why she had been hospitalized so many years ago and what it had done to her. The boyfriend with whom she had the argument with in school after she got out of the hospital had given her an STD. Unfortunately, it was a bad one, and it left her with a lot of internal scarring in her fallopian tubes. The doctors told her she would probably never be able to have a normal pregnancy; more than likely any pregnancies could end up being ectopic, and could potentially put her life at risk. We spent the rest of the night trying to console her, and offering our “kind” suggestions. Trying to convince her that there were options, and maybe she should just try talking to him to see where it would go. However, not to our surprise, she adamantly refused to have any part of it. A few days later, and after he had time to think things over, Todd, her boyfriend, came by to talk. He, like Kai, had decided it didn’t matter, they