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the brother school and gets invited by their friend while Amy does not. Because of these reasons, Amy gets really irritated and she wants to punish Hillary. She then
punishes Hillary by framing her. She throws herself down the stairs and tells people that she is pushed by Hillary. This accident happens because Amy got irritated by
Hillary Handy. It is a clear evidence of Amy’s irritability and aggressiveness. The fact that Amy gets irritated by simple reasons can also be seen from
Hillary Handy’s story when they are in high school. After the incident, Hillary chooses to move back to Memphis a month later. Suddenly, she gets a letter that
shows the list why Amy frames her. It can be seen in the quotation below. ‘About a month after I moved back to Memphis, I got a letter. It wasn’t
signed, it was typed, but it was obviously Amy. It was a list of all the ways I’d let her down. Crazy stuff: Forgot to wait for me after English, twice.
Forgot I am allergic to strawberries, twice.’
Flynn, 2012: 326 From the lines above, the reasons written why Amy framed Hillary are
obviously not that serious. However, what she did to Hillary is beyond the normal people would do.
The explanations above show that Amy is a kind of person who is easily irritated because of small things and aggressive in order to return the anger. It can be
concluded from some points above that Amy has irritability and aggressiveness in her personality by showing some actions, i.e. framing her best friend because she is more
popular than her, calling the trucker company because it flips her car, and acting abrasive to her husband.
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5. Reckless Disregard for Safety of Self or Others
As the result of their impulsivity, people with personality disorder are usually reckless disregard for safety of self or others American Psychiatric Association,
2000: 650. Since they are failed to plan ahead, there will be many incidents happening because of what they did. In Amy case, there are several incidents that
show how she does not really care about other people’s or even her safety. Amy’s actions and behaviors of her being reckless disregard for safety of self and others will
be further explained below.
Item 22: Cut myself has been on the list a long time. Now it’s real and my arm hurts. A lot. It takes a very special discipline to slice oneself past the
paper-cut layer, down to the muscle. You want a lot of blood, but not so much that you pass out, get discovered hours later in a kiddie pool of red with a lot
of explaining to do. I held a box cutter to my wrist first, but looking at the crisscross of veins, I felt like a bomb technician in an action movie. Snip the
wrong line and you die. I ended up cutting into the inside of my upper arm, gnawing on a rag so I wouldn’t scream. I sat cross-legged on my kitchen floor
for ten minutes, letting the blood drizzle steadily until I’d made a nice thick puddle.
Flynn, 2012: 248 The quotation above is Amy’s narration when she explains her actions. Amy
wants to frame her husband. In order to make it successful, Amy tries to make a puddle of her blood. She cuts herself so the police would get blood stain of her own
blood. This action shows that she is reckless disregard for her own safety. Cutting herself can lead to dangerous incident. She might run out of blood or cut the wrong
pulse. Even though she knows it already, she still does it because she wants to make her plan works..
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Cutting herself is not the only plan she has. She even plans to shoot herself as well. Her thought of getting a gun to shoot herself can be clearly seen in the quotation
below.
I have changed plans only twice so far. The first was the gun. I was going to get a gun and then, on the morning I disappeared, I was going to shoot
myself. Nowhere dangerous: through a calf or a wrist. I would leave behind a bullet with my flesh and blood on it. A struggle occurred Amy was shot
Flynn, 2012: 326 In the line above, Amy tells her plan of buying a gun. She wants to shoot
herself by using the gun so she can frame her husband as the shooter. However, this plan does not work because the people Amy visit to get a gun do not have it. Even so,
her thought to buy a gun and shoot herself to die is clear evidence that Amy is reckless disregard for the safety of self or others.
Actually, being reckless disregard for safety of self or others is already seen since Amy was in high school. She does not mind to sacrifice her own body in order
to get her plan works. It can be clarified by Hillary Handy’s statement below. ‘So Amy said you pushed her?’
‘Yeah, because I was craaaazy. I was obsessed with her, and I wanted to be Suzy, and then being Suzy wasn’t enough – I had to be Amy. And she had all
this evidence she’d had me create over the past few months. Her parents, obviously, had seen me lurking around the house. I theoretically accosted her
mom. My hair dyed blond and the clothes I’d bought that matched Amy’s – clothes I bought while shopping with her, but I couldn’t prove that. All her
friends came in, explained how Amy for the past month had been so frightened of me. All this shit. I looked totally insane. Completely insane. Her
parents got restraining order on me. And I kept swearing it wasn’t me, but by then I was so miserable that I wanted to leave the school anyway. So we
didn’t fight expulsion. I wanted to get away by that time. I mean, the girl
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cracked her own ribs. I was scared – this little fifteen-year-old, she’d pulled this off. Fooled friends, parents, teachers.’
Flynn, 2012: 326 The statement above shows how Amy is reckless by throwing herself down
the stairs and she even cracks her own ribs. Her goal is to make other people such as her friends, parents, and also teachers believe her. It is a kind of extreme way to
frame a friend. By throwing herself down the flight of stairs, it is obvious that Amy does not even consider about her own self. For her, it is important to achieve her goal
even though she has to lose her life. Another action done by Amy which shows her recklessness can be seen when
she tells about Desi’s mother. When they date during their high school year, Amy does not like Desi’s mother because she is cold to her. Because of that, Amy
scratches her own face and tells Desi that his mother attacks her. It is obviously a lie, but again, Amy is reckless to her own safety. She does not think about how her face
would look like. She just needs Desi to be angry to his mother and she achieves that goal. The quotation of this incident can be seen below.
His mother. I would die if his mother came up here, because she would report me immediately. The woman despises me, all because of that incident back in
high school – so long ago, and she still holds a grudge. I scratched up my face and told Desi she attacked me the woman was so possessive, and so
cold to me, she might as well have.
Flynn, 2012: 402
Amy’s actions that endanger herself do not only stop that way. She keeps acting reckless disregard for her own safety. She surely wants to make sure that Desi
will be framed as her kidnapper. In order to achieve that, Amy prepares a lot of thing
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which can be used as evidences to the police. The quotation below will explain what she does in order to achieve her goal to frame Desi.
‘I took a wine bottle, and I abused myself with it every day, so the inside of my vagina looked…right. Right for a rape victim. Then today I let him have
sex with me so I had his semen, and then I slipped pills into his martini.’
Flynn, 2012: 435 Wine bottle is obviously not a kind of stuff which can be put inside vital
organ. Even so, Amy still does it to her vagina in order to get the evidence of her being raped. It is certain that her act is very reckless disregard for her own safety. She
does not think that it will destroy her vital organ. Besides abusing herself with wine bottle, Amy also tries to poison herself so she could get enough evidence to frame
Nick. She admits it with a proud, as stated in the quotation below. ‘But I decided attempted murder wasn’t good enough for you. It had to be
bigger than that. Still, I couldn’t get the poisoning idea out of my head. I liked the idea of you working up to the murder. Trying the cowardly way first. So I
went through with it. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘All that vomit, so shocking. An innocent, frightened wife might have some of that vomit, just in case. You can’t blame her, being a little paranoid.’ She gave
a satisfied smile. ‘Always have a backup plan to the backup plan.’ ‘You actually poisoned yourself.’
‘Nick, please, you’re shocked? I killed myself.’
Flynn, 2012: 436 The quotation above is a conversation between Nick and Amy when she
confesses to Nick about her plan. She actually poisons herself and keeps the vomit so she can have backup plan when her real plan does not work. Self poisoning is
obviously dangerous since Amy might kill herself. However, she already puts her all
