“If you Let Me, I’ll Kill Myself”: A Compelling Exploration of Toxic Relationships and Finding Strength in Adversity

‘If you let me, I’ll kill myself’, the latest novel by Silvia Núñez del Arco, takes us back to adolescence, a stage full of illusions, heartbreak and discoveries. For many, it is the period in which innocence is broken, as the young man goes out into the world to discover that he is not invincible, as he once believed. The protagonist, at the short age of thirteen, begins to live these emotions within the network in which she was trapped: an intense and desperate relationship, which forces her, in a certain way, to accelerate her path towards adulthood.

“I have always associated writing as a kind of catharsis to heal wounds and redeem my guilt. It’s like a therapy to remove the things that continue to hurt me. For this reason, I feel that I heal something with each book. Before writing this novel, I had a time when I began to torment myself because I did not understand how I had allowed myself to go through this situation. However, this novel helped me forgive my mistakes of the past”, emphasized Silvia.

In ‘If you let me, I’ll kill myself’, the reader encounters a series of obsessive and toxic behaviors. However, throughout the novel, the main character proves that he can get out of there, but the price was the loss of innocence and the simplicity of youth. “It seemed important to me to talk about these issues so that the girls know how to recognize these behaviors and tell them that they are not alone, that many of us go through it,” added the writer.

‘If you leave me, I’ll kill myself’ (Photo: Alessandro Currarino/ El Comercio)

– The story takes place when the protagonist was only 13 years old, why dust off the story of a teenage romance after so long?

I decide to write this book as a way to forgive myself for certain mistakes of my adolescence. I always felt that I carried a lot of guilt for having allowed certain abuses, certain behaviors and for having become entangled in a toxic situation. Therefore, this novel was a way of letting go, as part of a therapy. On the other hand, it seemed important to me to address certain issues that, today, have been normalized, such as manipulation within the couple. If it happens to a girl of that age, I would like her to know that she is not alone, because many of us go through it.

– At the beginning of the novel, you can see how the protagonist lives in a fantasy bubble, where her boyfriend is the perfect guy, so the evolution ends up being somewhat surprising for the reader. Was it just as surprising for her? At what point did she realize that she was surrounded by toxic behaviors in her relationship?

She begins this relationship between the ages of 13 and 14 and ends it four years later, at approximately 18 years of age. At 17, she is already beginning to realize that something is wrong with her boyfriend. Throughout the book, he completely changes and becomes unrecognizable. I feel like she realizes it from the beginning, but she can’t leave him because she has an exponential dependency on him. For her, it was to reconfigure everything she had thought and planned for years, because she even felt that she was going to marry him. She felt that putting her all into the relationship would make things better, but I think that’s a mistake. There is no use accommodating to the couple if in the end you are going to lose yourself. Anyway, in the book, just as the boyfriend changes for the worse, she ends up finding the answers she was looking for.

– And he also finds his vocation, right?

Exact. Thanks to this story, she finds herself and says ‘I’m going to write’. I feel like all this happened to make me who I am now. Despite having been a stormy experience, she gave me many emotional tools that I use today and help me to be a mother. I have a 12-year-old daughter, so she helps me tell her ‘I went through that, I wouldn’t want you to experience something like that’.

– Have you ever put yourself in that situation? Have you thought that your daughter could live a similar experience at her young age?

Yes, I have thought about it, but there are things that, as parents, we cannot control. I faithfully believe that experience is the best teacher. If she has to live it, she’ll learn something from it, just like every mistake makes you learn.

– The main character was a girl only 13 years old, one year older than your daughter. Do you feel that, for something like this to happen to her at such a young age, there were some external factors in her life that made her normalize these behaviors?

The character is definitely running from something. She finds in him a kind of refuge. It is something that is mentioned at the beginning, that she gets involved with the boy because he was always happy and, through that happiness, she seeks to escape from certain things in her personal life that were not. Throughout the novel, she ends up realizing that happiness is a red flag. No one can be happy all the time, it’s not normal. At that moment, she assimilates that that smile was a cover for a duel that he had not finished processing. After all, both find themselves running away from their own realities, but that doesn’t last long. As they get to know each other, they realize many things, including the lies in the relationship.

“No one can be happy all the time, it is not normal” (Photo: Alessandro Currarino / El Comercio)

– Was psychological help, which was mentioned at some point, an important factor for her to assimilate that her boyfriend’s behavior was not normal?

Definitely. I perfectly remember that in the book there is a psychological break, after the first break, in which the main character’s parents see her really badly, to the point that she is walking in circles around a table. Therefore, even without knowing the full story, because she felt ashamed to tell everything, her parents send her to the psychologist. I feel that this made her accept reality, see things differently and take her place. Although they returned, things were not the same, because there is an empowerment, where she goes from being the girl who abides and becomes a woman who makes her own decisions. Thanks to that, she says ‘This is as far as we’ve come.’ My goal was always that, that the character that started is different from the one that reaches the end, that he makes mistakes, but that he changes.

– Regarding your friends, how did you observe them? Perhaps, realizing these behaviors, she was envious of the relationships of her friends?

I think so. She was very young and was the first to have a boyfriend, especially in a long relationship. In her head, I think she envied her peace of mind, since she experienced super rare events linked to his mental health.

– And did you feel that accepting those behaviors was part of loving him?

At the time, I felt like it was. Today I think it is not. She was a lost child, seeking to escape her own reality. She even makes advances that she is not ready for, because she gives herself body and soul to please him. I think, today, she would no longer believe that it is love. Inclusively, this novel has helped me to change my conception of love in a positive way and to know what my limits are. The first is that my partner does not decide for me.

– Just as you managed to change your perception of love through this story, do you feel that it would also be useful for girls to delve into it?

I would love for you to read stories like this, that inspire you to know what is right and what is wrong. That’s what I love about books, that one can learn through other people’s experience. I would even love it if my daughter reads it, because I’m not afraid of her knowing the mistakes of my past and I’ve always been very open about it. It seems to me that this novel should be used to know that something like this can happen to anyone, someone completely normal, and that they are not alone.

– Now that you will present your fifth novel, what is the next step?

There was talk of republishing my second novel, ‘There’s a girl in my soup’. However, when I started working on it, I started to totally rewrite it. I’m still on it. On the other hand, I am also starting to work on a novel about my childhood, my early years and my relationship with my parents, which will also serve as an explanation for my previous works.

The novel will be presented on July 23 at 5 PM, in the César Vallejo Auditorium of the 2023 International Book Fair. The author, Silvia Núñez del Arco, and Jaime Bayly will participate in this day.

2023-07-24 06:31:43
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