Choking Game

A must-read for teens and parents, regardless of their children's age. Choking Game is a chilling, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting story of an alliance so unique, it redefines the meaning of hope. It is the inner journey of a depressed teenager, MJ, whose mind is all made up but whose inner voice insists on asking questions and debating MJ's answers to make sure suicide is the only option left. Nothing in MJ's typical middle-class suburban life seems out of the ordinary, but deep inside, MJ is tormented by a series of sad events. Combined with difficulty to make friends, the death of an only friend in a choking game incident, and a nasty rumor that spread through social media, MJ's mind is choked by the outside world he did not create. As the imaginary noose around his neck tightens, his inner voice becomes louder, more annoying, relentless and even cruel; anything to make MJ see the other side of the coin he flipped. And when a quiet boy and a riveting new girl in school connect with MJ, a rare light blazes through the dark world of MJ?s teenage depression. Inspired by the tragic death of a young boy who made the mistake of playing the dangerous choking game, the book deliberately does not mention whether MJ is a teenage girl or a boy. It allows readers to see the character for themselves, to feel MJ?s struggle, and to experience the journey into the depth of his soul and the world we live in. "My life's pretty boring. Mom and Dad, living in a house similar to all of the other houses in our subdivision. Hell, the whole neighborhood, subdivision after subdivision looks alike. You could get lost here and wander around for miles thinking your home is the next one." -Are you serious? You really think all the houses look alike? Are you blind or something?- "My house looks different," Luke said. "That's not the point," Angelica said. "What? Am I missing something?" Luke said. "It's all sanitized. Everyone's home is similar in size, the neighborhood is perfectly planned, the schools are plastered in the middle of it. Everyone acts like the perfect nuclear family. Kids are sanitized, too. And it's not just the sanitizer in classrooms teachers squirt onto kids' hands after every stupid activity. The kind of sanitizer your parents and your teachers use seeps in through your every pore. It gets inside your head until you almost believe it. Gosh, you're lucky if you end up believing it because if you don't, you'll go crazy." "It's not only the sanitizer," Luke said. "I sometimes feel like I'm tied up in a straitjacket and caged up just in case I rip the jacket off." "Seriously?" -Seriously?- "This is funny, I thought the same thing!" -You never told me that!- "You did?" Luke said. "Yeah! First you can't run around on your own; you can't say what you really think. You're told what to do, what to say and the endless list of words you're not supposed to say; you're told how to think, how to feel, and what it is you want for the rest of your life. You have no identity. You are a madman in a straitjacket who must be coached and protected from his own self. You want to scream, but the more you scream, the tighter the jacket gets. If you keep screaming, someone in the adult world around you will figure out there must be something wrong with you. And before you can defend yourself, you're diagnosed with a syndrome no one has ever heard of so that the 'guards' can medicate you until you stop screaming. Until you run out of air and collapse. Until you're numb and do what they say. Until you fulfill your parents' plans for the life they never had."