Penelope Przekop

Q&A
Aberrations

1. Aberrations is a probing emotional drama that explores a number of themes –

parent-child relationship, love, friendship, self-image, mental illness – but at the
heart of the story is this undercurrent about truth. Do we really know what’s
true in our lives? How do we handle the truth once we uncover it? We may not
always know what’s true but I believe most of us crave the truth, whether it’s related
to our larger world, our relationships, or simply who we really are. Sometimes we
don’t want to address the truth but we still crave it, and other times, we do want to
see it and address it but once we’re faced with it, we run. This is a fascinating conflict
of human nature. Once the truth, or reality, is uncovered, a choice is made. I think
these types of choices can be some of the most life-altering decisions people make.

2. What inspired you to write Aberrations? When I started the book, I was
settling into my adulthood and had a lot of questions on my mind about the paths I’d
taken, and whether they were right or wrong based on the outcomes. Initially, the book
was inspired by my own need for mother, who is mentally ill, coupled with my
experience of becoming an unwed mother as a college senior in the Deep South. In the
end, my need to understand the meaning and influence of my own truth kept me writing.

3. The main character, a college student named Angel, suffers from

narcolepsy. How difficult was it to shed light on such a complex dysfunction? It was
challenging, particularly because when I started writing the book 10 years ago, the
Internet was just taking off. There weren’t as many resources available as there are
today. I spent a lot of time reading message boards. I wanted to know about narcolepsy
from those who suffered from it rather than a medical textbook. I corresponded with
several young adults who had narcolepsy. They answered all my questions and reviewed
passages from the book. Every case of narcolepsy is different; my goal was to create a
plausible case. I also use her narcolepsy to raise issues of peer and self-acceptance. Plus it
symbolizes how we each, sometimes, sleep through life, crippled not by a disease or
disorder, but by a mindset.

4. It seems the other characters also go in and out of a sleep, so to speak, as

they live not fully in reality. For instance, it seems each character is troubled by
what they see as their own flaw or issue and is so blinded by their perceived
deficiency that they fail to fully awaken to the fact that others have their own
dysfunctions and their own fears or insecurities about them. Why do you think it’s
so hard for us to look past things that certainly may seem like baggage but in the
end make us who we really are? It’s hard to ignore the bags we carry. It’s tough to find
a place for their volume inside ourselves, so we carry them on the outside. If we can
productively internalize, it’s possible to evolve into something more complex and
interesting rather than a lightweight; everyone wants to be a lightweight, a blank canvas,
in a way. They want to hold the baggage behind their backs so no one will see. But each
person is a work of art. Until we see that, it all weighs us down while we try to keep the
canvas white. Once we appreciate the art in ourselves, we can recognize it in others.
5. One character is gay but hasn’t told his mom. Another is a 26-year-old
virgin who is adopted and lives in a trailer with her white-trash parents. Another
loses his wife to a tragedy. Another has the burden of a miscarriage. What do they
each have in common? They’re all wounded; they’ve all been hurt by what is true in
their lives. And each one has made their pain worse with the choices they’ve made in
response to their reality, which is the very thing that gives their lives unique meaning.

6. You write of mental illness, including schizophrenia. It’s hard for the
loved ones closest to the mentally ill to see them so weak, so helpless, so utterly in
pain. How do the innocent standbys deal with that? The pain damages everyone
involved but that experience can be the building blocks of the art in a person. The
innocent are forced to live in the unrealistic world of the ill person, and somehow balance
that with their own healthy reality. It’s inevitable that their view becomes skewed. Their
off-kilter reality, and struggle with it, impacts their choices and decisions because they
now see the world differently. I think it creates a unique reality for them, and just like any
baggage, they have to find a place for it.

7. Your book takes place in the late 80s in Shreveport, Louisiana. You
grew up in Louisiana. What was life like back then, over there? It was a slow-paced,
religious, uniform culture. We were a generation on the verge of the technological
explosion. Our parents had no concept of these things or that they were coming. There
was a huge emphasis on identifying what was sinful and wrong, what stretched the limits.
There were a lot of boxes, categories, and labels for people and places. This created
secrets and yearnings and dreaming. It was a time and place that made it hard to move
outside the mold. We could see the world opening up in so many ways but our box was
clearly clamped shut.

8. Many of the characters live with lies or secrets and yet it seems these lies
eventually are exposed. Why do we tend to burden ourselves with secrets that we
know deep down will one day be revealed? Perhaps we want to prolong the illusion
that we‘re something more than what we are. Most lies and secrets revolve around
something we’re ashamed of, whether it’s outside our control or related to actions we
took. Either way, keeping it hidden usually just makes situations worse in the end.

9. Angel grows up without a mother and she seems to always be looking for
someone to be that mother for her. Why does she think she’s found the touch of her
mother when she has a one-night experimental fling with a lesbian? She craves and
needs feminine tenderness. She’s defined this as mother, something soft and warm,
accepting and positive, a feeling and experience beyond and apart from her actual
mother. This need allows her to accept and understand feminine love in another realm.
She’s open to experiencing it however she can. She later learns that mother can come in
many forms. It all comes down to her intense need for a particular emotion.

10. Aberrations is also clearly about the choices we make – and the sacrifices
we volunteer to undergo. But sometimes we make the wrong choice and our life is
never the same. How does one live with their mistakes or regrets? It’s very difficult,
or course. I think there are some mistakes and regrets that we never forget about
completely. If you know that you’ve learned and grown, it helps keep those things in
perspective. Sometimes we just have to forgive ourselves, hoping that we did the best we
could at the time, even if it wasn’t good enough. We have to somehow make those
experiences part of the masterpiece of our lives, something unique and extraordinary.

11. You say that sometimes the gifts we receive are not what we want and
that only in time do we see their worth. How so? This speaks again to allowing all that
happens to us to build the masterpiece of who we are. If we can embrace both the good
and bad as value added, we can find a place for it. We’re given certain challenges for a
reason. It’s common knowledge that trials make us stronger but to actively live under
that premise isn’t easy. If we did, we’d have an easier time of accepting ourselves and
everyone else. We could move forward and let others. We could accomplish so much
more. Everything is worth something.

12. One of the characters is an adulterer. Why does he stay in a marriage

that he shouldn’t have entered in the first place and why would someone want to
date a married guy? He doesn’t want to face his mistake; he doesn’t want to be the kind
of person that would make that mistake. He struggles with understanding how he feels,
what he should do, and what that means about him. His dilemma exposes the question of
whether one should always do what society says is the right thing versus what is the right
thing for the individual. When they don’t mesh, society can be unforgiving. In this case,
loneliness causes Angel to do things that other people might not consider, such as getting
involved with a married man, which is an unsafe situation. But for her, he is safe because
he understands her condition, a major issue for her.

13. Angel is resistant to accepting a woman as her step-mom whom her dad
has been dating for a long time. Why can’t she embrace this woman who wants
nothing more than to love and help her? Her step-mom is harsh at first; she dishes out
tough love, which is what Angel needs but she also needs and craves feminine
tenderness. This craving and her youth cause her to misunderstand tough love. She’s also
hung up in the conflict of wanting mother but not accepting it because it’s not being
provided to her in line with her idealistic perception and definition of what mother is.

14. Angel discovers she’d been lied to her whole life about some very serious
things. How does one confront that their life is not at all what it had appeared to be?
As with the reveal of any truth, a choice is made. We absorb the new information and
decide how to assimilate it into who we are, but it’s not necessarily an easy thing to do.
This can be an active or passive process, but it happens. It’s tough because even the most
positive person can be thrown because reality is shifting, which shifts perceptions about
the individual and their world. In a way, this is part of the growing up process for all of
us. We find out the world wasn’t what we thought it was, sometimes little by little, and
sometimes all of a sudden.

15. Your story redefines what it means to be a parent. Please share with us
what it truly is all about to raise a child, especially if the child isn’t a blood relative?
In many ways, genetics is nothing. Love is everything and love doesn’t require a flesh
and blood connection. Bonds come from giving and sharing. To give and share with
someone who wasn’t born to you is a beautiful thing. It represents the ultimate choice to
love something beyond yourself; something you know can’t or won’t always give back.
There are some people who can’t do that for their genetic offspring. Love is love is love.
When we try to define it or put rules and boundaries around it, we all diminish it.

16. One of the characters asks: “Is it bad to want more than what you
have?” Is it? No, not when what you have is being judged by the standards of others and
not yourself. Each person should go after the kind of life they want, not what others think
they should have. Those can be boundaries or boxes that we get trapped in. Everything
seems fine but on the inside, we know it’s not what we want. That’s when we need to be
courageous enough to make tough decisions and changes, and not allow ourselves to stay
in a rut.

17. One character says: “The smallest thang can change somebody’s world.
We all live in different worlds. You didn’t think we all lived in the same one, did
you?” What does this mean? Each individual’s reality, or world, is based on their own
unique perception. Perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and
organizing sensory information. If a percept has no grounding in a person’s experience,
the person may literally not perceive it. If we cannot perceive what we do not understand,
we define what we see based on what we do understand. This seems to be an important
concept for understanding ourselves and others. I wish more people would realize that I
don’t live in their world, and that it’s okay. It doesn’t mean mine is flawed.

18. You also write about overstepping boundaries. Who sets these
boundaries and should we break past them if we want to grow or change?
Boundaries can be created when we try to live in someone else’s perceived world. We
create them for ourselves when we try to do this, and others create them by not allowing
us to live how we need to, to create or become our own unique masterpiece. I may
overstep a boundary that you, or society, created, but it may not actually be a boundary in
my world. I just may need to step past it to evolve into what I was meant to be, to be the
best I can be.

19. How does your book show the danger of idolizing someone, as Angel
does her mother? It shows how dangerous it is to define others so tightly, which is what
can happen when we put someone on a pedestal. We are inevitably disappointed. In this
case, she idolized her mother because she needed her and she wasn’t there. This was
dangerous because it kept her from realizing that a lot of what she needed was all around
her and inside her. She wasn’t seeing or accepting the very things she wanted because she
was so focused on her idealistic view of mother.

20. Why do we think or assume the lives of others are perfect compared to
our own? The grass is always greener on the other side, right? We want for so much
and struggle with the patience and courage it takes to get there. We want to believe that
we will get there so imagining others are already made it to that place gives us hope in an
odd way, I think. We fail to see that that we’re all on a journey with unique paths. We’re
too hard on ourselves, and fail to appreciate all the gifts we have, even the ones we didn’t
want.

21. Is holding back the truth from another a lie? Yes, in some cases, but life
is complicated and sometimes we do this out of love for the other person, or out of our
own weakness and fear of facing the truth ourselves.

22. One character says she was guilty of ‘the need for someone else to make
me perfect simply by thinking it was true. Why do we act this way? I think there’s a
little desperation in us all. We want to be something more than what we are. And this can
be an easy way to perfection. If you think I’m perfect and I’ve managed to fit into all the
boundaries and definitions you have for perfection, then I must be, right? Wrong. Even
if I fit into someone else’s perfect world, it’s theirs not mine. Once it shifts, I’ll be
exposed. We can achieve a type of perfection if we stay in our own reality, our own
world, a masterpiece we can create, filled with flaws.