I finished around 2pm.  58,048 words.  That means it’s not epic.  Good.  It’s too intense to be epic.  It’s too long as it is.  It’s hard to read.  I read through the whole thing yesterday and it is really brutal and nasty.  My life was shit.  It’s going to be interesting to hear peoples reactions.  I let Noah have it already because I couldn’t not let Noah have it.  I need him to know this story.  He got up to the beginning of 1988.  He has a long way to go yet.

I spent most of yesterday angry.  Reading the book through in a day reminds me that I have very good reasons to be angry.  So angry that flames come out the top of my head.  But I don’t want to be angry.  Being angry doesn’t feel good.  That book is closed now.  Those chapters are over.  Noah will finish reading the book by this weekend.  Probably Sarah, too.  They are quick like that.

Then I’m going to wait till next year to do anything else.  But I want them to know.  I’m not writing this book because I want to make money on the story.  I’m writing this because I cannot continue to live with people not knowing this story.  I can’t even handle waiting until I get a final draft before showing it to the people who claim they want to build a life with me.  They claim they want to know me.  Well here the fuck I am.  It hurts my soul that this is my story.  This should be fiction.  No one should have a life like that.  But I did.

And I’m pretty awesome.  No, I’m not always tactful.  That’s a small sin in the scheme of things.  Really. It is.

I have this weird feeling in my chest.  I feel empty and hollow.  I did my very best to bring up all the major threads that wove through my childhood.  I didn’t give any of them a lot of individual face time.  There were too many.  I don’t think people could handle a book that explicated all of them intensely.  It’s too sad and painful.  Yes, yes, a few people could.  But I’m not trying to write a book that is only for the biggest bad asses.  I’m just trying to be seen.

I wrote this as simply and directly as I could.  I tried to do it without excessive anger.  I tried to present people in a balanced way.  I tried to just tell the truth.  As simply and plainly as I can.  I used simple words and simple sentences.  I used almost no dialogue.  This is something I had to just say and get off my chest.  And now it’s off my chest and on my hard drive.  I have emailed copies to two people.  I am saving it on Google Docs.  I might put it in Noah’s Drop Box just so that I don’t lose it.  I want back ups.  I’m half tempted to sit here and print it right now just so that I have it.  So that I can see what this looks like on a page.

I want to be seen.  And that means I have to deal with the fact that people are going to have very different reactions.  Be sure that you’re right, then go ahead.  I’m just telling the truth.  This is my story.  I didn’t embellish it.  I didn’t make it more melodramatic than it is.  It is a hard story to read.  I don’t think that certain people understand what they meant to me.  What their place was in my life.

In three months I am going to publish it as an e-book.  Noah is going to help me figure that out.  I’m not going to deal with shopping around for a publisher right now.  That’s not the point.  The point is to get it out.  I’m not doing this because I want to make money off this story.  I just want to be seen.

I don’t want anyone to try to edit it before Christmas because this is already an emotionally intense time of year.  Old trauma can sit on a shelf and wait for a bit.

It’s time to shift gears.  I have to get my house ready.  I’m doing something really fun this weekend.

I had a lovely meet-up-for-coffee yesterday.  I like being able to sit down and talk with an attractive man about statistical analysis.  It means he thinks I can understand it.  It means he thinks I’m smart.  Oh that’s hot.  That made me want to sit on his lap.  I didn’t.  But I thought about it and smiled.  I really like intelligent men.