I thought I was ready to relive it all.
To write the shards, the mess, the scattered parts of me into something whole.
And in a way, I was. Some of it was beautiful. Writing helped me see one of the most devastating parts of my life from a completely different perspective — fourteen years later, I could finally understand it in a way I never could back then.
But I wasn’t ready for the other side.
Because reliving the beautiful parts was good —
but reliving the broken parts felt like I was still there.
Even fourteen years later, they still hurt.
It’s strange — I even had epiphanies on top of epiphanies. Understanding while writing about understanding. But at the same time, the same pages that gave me light also broke me again.
That’s the cost of memoir. You don’t just write it — you live it twice.
Alan Watts once said: if you look at a piece of woven fabric, one side shows the beautiful pattern. Flip it over, and it’s all knots, tangles, cuts, and messy threads. Both sides are real.
That’s what writing feels like. That’s what life feels like.
The beautiful side is what the reader sees.
The messy side is what I live.
And maybe the art is in showing both, without shame.
I don’t know yet if this book will be “good” in the way people measure books. What I do know is that it takes me everywhere — one minute I’m laughing, the next I’m distraught, the next I’m humbled.
It’s an eclectic rhythm.
And I need a breather.
But whether this book ends up being good for the world, or just good for me — either way, it’s going to be good.