Get a Life, Chloe Brown

Chloe and Red each struggle to heal from past trauma in Get a Life, Chloe Brown. This trauma manifests differently for both, but it similarly affects their ability to trust themselves and others. Throughout the text, Red and Chloe begin to heal from their trauma which enables them to better support one another.

After Chloe’s fibromyalgia diagnosis, she faced desertion from people around her that she trusted and loved. She has an unwavering support system in her family, but her friends and former fiancé questioned the extent of her illness, or if she was even ill at all. This leaves Chloe with some deep-seated trust issues, and the feeling that she is “easy to leave” (74). She states: “She’d learned the hard way that people were always looking for a reason to leave, that affection or adoration or promises of devotion turned to dust when things got tough” (74). This mindset negatively affects her relationships, including her relationship with Red, because she views connections, even ones as strong as love, as fallible and easily broken.

Through the creation and completion of her Get a Life list, and through her relationship with Red, Chloe begins the process of recovering from her abandonment issues. Part of her Get a Life list goal was to create a life of bravery, and she realizes that the creation of the list itself is an act of bravery: “She was starting to wonder if she had been brave from the beginning. If she’s just needed to love herself enough to realize it” (351). Her willingness to not only forgive Red for him lashing out at her, but to apologize, shows Chloe’s growth in believing that love does not mean everything goes smoothly, but that people work through challenges together.

Red’s trauma manifests in a lack of confidence in his identity and relationships. Because of his relationship with his ex, who made Red believe that he was worthless without her, Red abandons the London art scene. Red’s trauma surfaces again when he misinterprets Chloe saying that she put him on her Get a Life list. He lashes out at her, damaging their relationship in the process. His trauma response supersedes his rational mind and results in hurting the woman he loves most, nearly losing her. Red works through these feelings through therapy, which he promises to continue attending at the end of the text in his apology letter to Chloe. This shows that Red understands that healing from trauma is an ongoing process, and that just because he and Chloe are back together it does not mean that Red is completely healed or no longer needs therapy.

Chloe and Red are not magically healed at the end of the text. Even after their reconciliation, they are realistic about the fact that relationships take effort and energy, but that they will continue working on “filling each other’s gaps” (362) together as partners. Through healing their relationships with themselves, Chloe and Red become better able to enter a healthy relationship with each other.