I'm Glad My Mom Died

Debra is Jennette’s mother and is always referred to by “mom” or “mommy” in the book by Jennette. She has four children, but the focus of her attention seems to be Jennette, and it is Jennette that she pushes vehemently into acting. She has no adult friendships and has an extremely volatile and abusive relationship with her husband. She teaches Jennette about calorie restriction, and while Jennette never explicitly says that her mother suffered from anorexia, she exhibits similar behaviors to Jennette after she develops an eating disorder. She claims that her dream was to be an actress, but her parents would not let her. This motivates her to push Jennette into the career at a young age.

Debra exhibits disturbing behavior. She often has meltdowns that involve her dissolving into tears or violent rage. Her treatment of Jennette is dependent on how well she feels Jennette is adhering to her ideals, and her intense desire to utterly control her. As Jennette grows older and Debra becomes sicker, her emotional dependency on Jennette becomes increasingly clear. She is the central figure in her daughter’s life, and the book’s structure itself is built around her death; the book exists in two parts, before and after she dies.

Mark McCurdy is Jennette’s father. Jennette is much closer to her mother than her father, as her father is often working, and Jennette is busy with acting. While their relationship is not necessarily negative, Jennette’s close relationship with and childhood worship of her mother causes her to see her father as the “bad guy” in her parent’s relationship. Jennette’s descriptions of her childhood and home life do not often include her father, but it seems that when he wasn’t physically absent, he was emotionally withdrawn and resigned to his wife’s behavior. He responds to her aggression, both toward Jennette and himself, with passivity or by completely ignoring it.

After the death of Debra, he enters a new relationship with her best friend/occasional enemy, who Debra had always accused of wanting to be like her. This does not seem to bother Jennette. Soon after, he reveals to Jennette that he is not her biological father. He is also not the biological brother of two of her brothers. Jennette accepts this and thanks him, but after this point in the book, stops referring to him as “dad” and begins referring to him as Mark. They maintain a good, if awkward, relationship. Jennette learns that he was aware of her mother’s affair when it occurred, emphasizing the resignation that he felt throughout his marriage. While the book does not extrapolate on his own thoughts and feelings about his marriage and his wife, it seems likely that Debra’s abusive behavior led to a learned response and was probably subject to the same emotional manipulation as Jennette.

Miranda played the lead role in iCarly and eventually became a close friend of Jennette. When Jennette first meets Miranda, she sees her as almost the antithesis of herself: cool, wealthy, established, and confident. Ultimately, Jennette is struck by Miranda’s kindness and generosity. Miranda’s friendship is one of the few things from Jennette’s time on iCarly that she reflects on fondly, and she is the only costar that Jennette speaks about at length.

While Miranda is someone that Jennette feels she can always rely on, and they spend a great deal of time together, their friendship is not one with a great deal of physical or verbal affection. They rarely hug, which feels natural to Jennette, and when Miranda and Jennette learn that Jennette’s mother is dying, Miranda begins to talk about something completely irrelevant. This idiosyncratic element of their close bond is charming and seems to bring Jennette comfort. Jennette does not imply that Miranda knew the extent of the abuse she suffered from her mother or The Creator, but she does tell Miranda about her eating disorder as a part of her recovery process. While much of Jennette’s struggle in the book is internal and kept entirely secret from her peers, it is clear that Miranda was still a figure of support.

Described as speaking on the phone in broken Italian, Steven is possibly from Italy or has an Italian family. Jennette sees him on set in Toronto and is immediately smitten. She describes it as a moment that immediately allowed her to distract herself from how she was completely under the control of her eating disorder. While living with Jennette, he has a mental health crisis that involves a delusion that he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. He is diagnosed with schizophrenia and is put on a lithium prescription to manage his illness. Ultimately, his dependency on and dissociative response to weed is a major catalyst for his breakup with Jennette. Jennette directly correlates her progress in recovery with the dissolution of their relationship and bond.

Jennette considers Steven to be her first real love, and theirs is her first relationship where she feels genuine intimacy and satisfaction. Her relationship with Steven, as well as their sex life, serves as what often feels like the only good thing Jennette has going, and the loss of that relationship is an important catalyst and symbol of change and growth both in Jennette’s life and in the book.