So here's the thing…I've written a book. Why? Because.
But I'm going to have to back up a little bit and share the explanation of how I got to a point in my life that made me decide to write a book in the first place. (This is where the change of opinion might come from…)
While I've always kept my real personal life very private, I feel it's okay to share some of it here. Back in 2008, things in my life were falling apart at the seams. The one thing that was my true anchor was my daughter, Farrah. At the time she was two and completely innocent and unaware of things going on with our family. After confirming an affair that my husband had been having with a good friend of mine who worked for us, I'd taken my daughter and left to stay with my parents. I wanted to convince myself that everything was going to be okay and I just needed to clear my head and hope that perhaps things would go back to the way they used to be. In my feeble attempt to provide myself with cheap therapy, I had purchased 4 books to help me through my troubles…things along the lines of, "After the Affair," "How to Love Yourself Again", "A Happier You", and "How to Stop Being a Sad Sack of Shit". Okay, that one I didn't buy, but it sounds fascinating, huh!
One night, while I laid on my parents' couch that I had turned into a bed, I just stared at nothing, wide awake even after taking a Xanax to calm my mind. Crying. Just like every other night there, crying is all I did while I tried desperately to find some sort of answer in those four books to tell me how to feel even a little bit of joy again. And as I painstakingly read through page after page, I felt nothing. I felt empty and dead inside. Numb.
And that's when my mom shuffled into the living room in her robe and slippers standing over me while holding something in her hand.
It was Book 1 of the Harry Potter series.
This is what my mom said to me: "You are not going to find what you're looking for in any of those books. It's not there. You have way too much reality happening to you right now and you need to find a way to pull away from it and escape. I want you to read this instead, okay?"
And with that, my whole world changed.
A book. A book and my mother's words changed my everything. Out of all the things my mom has ever said to me in my life, it is the most important that will stick with me until I die. And I don't think I can thank her enough because she truly saved my life that night.
I read that book. Then I read the other 6. And after that? I read them again. A silly story about a boy who was a wizard, who went to a wizarding school, who had wizarding friends, and who had to defeat an evil wizard. It was about as opposite of my reality as it could get.
When I had my moments of being alone, rather than dwelling on my shitty situation, I put my nose in those books and escaped into a world that wasn't mine and doing that soothed my mind, softened my heart, and put joy back into my life.
Did things improve at home? A little, but then they went south again. But I was okay. And every time my reality got a little too real, I'd reach for a different book. I had so many books stacked on top of each other in my nightstand and a large library in my Kindle, there was no shortage of taking a vacation from what was surely going to drown me.
Here's the thing that I felt that saved me and brought me back to myself…something about the characters in a book that you actually catch yourself lost in, it's because you can relate to those characters in one way or another. Maybe some sort of dilemma they have, maybe their personality, maybe what they do for a living, or maybe even struggling with their own life problems. The thing is, you get to read about their lives and connect and feel and understand them…and something about that is so damn freeing, it's hard to explain. But when I read about a character that might be brave, I'd want to be brave. If a character was confident, I'd want to be confident. If a character was the kind of person who didn't take shit from someone who wronged them…you bet your ass I stopped taking shit. While the author may have "made up" these people, they came from somewhere in the author's mind and heart and it's what made them so believable and very, very real. Anyone out there that has fallen in love with a fictional character, knows exactly what I'm talking about. (Yes, that happens to people!)
So, in 2012, I moved to Wenatchee with my daughter where I started a new life for us. In the process, I worked on my laptop every day at a quaint little coffee shop. I'd get tired of work and would find myself filling up my Blog because I really enjoyed writing more than anything else. Then one night, I had a dream of something so incredible that probably lasted only 10 seconds, but it woke me up and sparked a fire inside me and I knew exactly what I was going to do the next day I went to the coffee shop.
I wrote.
I'd close my eyes and imagine every little detail of my characters, their surroundings, their experiences, everything. And I would type so fast, I amazed myself. My fingers would fly across the keyboard trying to keep up with the story in my mind…I couldn't get it out fast enough. This was a new kind of therapy for me and working on my story helped me grow as an individual…something I hadn't been in a long time.
I wrote the story for me as it never occurred to me that anything I wrote, especially a novel, would be worth reading to anyone else. But I was wrong. A publishing company picked me up and it is being edited right now. While it may not be the most impressive novel out there, I wrote it, I finished it (that's a BIG step for me), and I'm pretty proud of it. The journey to get here was a difficult one, but I can honestly say without that "book intervention" with my mom and J.K. Rowling, I have no idea who I would even be right now. But because of some really great books…I love who I am and I am loving this life.
If you ever feel like shit is hitting the fan in your life, take my mother's advice and step out of that reality…the mental vacation is truly healing.
