Writing wasn't a choice, it was a calling.

I always had a very vivid mind. I can remember certain situations for years, almost as if I'm still there if I close my eyes hard enough. This was a blessing but also a curse. When I went through traumatic situations, they never left my memory. Visions would haunt my days, and dreams would haunt my nights. Often, I was told my memories were wrong, or that I added things to them to be more dramatic. But I learned that this was just a tactic to get me to forget the abuse happened, and for a very long time it worked. I turned into a person who never trusted her own thoughts, and it became almost impossible for me to make decisions about anything, even something as simple as what to eat for dinner. I figured whatever choice I made was going to be the wrong one, and that caused more anxiety than I already had. I was desperately looking for someone to guide me, but at the same time wanted to break free from the control I've been under.

In high school, I had a history teacher who was in love with the art of film. He had a mind like mine, and could see the stories unfold in his head, begging to be made into something great. He told me I was going to be an amazing writer one day based on a paper I turned in, but at that time I was a pissed off teenager who hated the world. I didn't care about the future; I was just trying to get through each day. I never loved books. In fact, most of the time I would skim read to pass classes by reading the first line of a paragraph and then skip right to the next one. It was enough of the information to get me through with all A's, and no one ever knew the difference. One of my close friends actually wrote in my yearbook something like, "I hope you have a wonderful life even when you're old and still don't read."

My mind is too busy to read. I try to, but then it goes off on a tangent and I have to read the same page several times before it sticks. People always wonder how I can write when I never really read books, and I don't have an answer. I may not have the finesse of other writers because of that, but my story is enough to make up for it.

I've been in and out of therapy my whole life. It started when I was four or five and my mother went into the institution. They brought us in for family therapy with her, and although I don't remember it, I'm sure it was traumatic. My father was a horrible communicator and was never one to talk about emotions or offer comfort when you were feeling them, so I can't even imagine how I handled all of the big emotions I was feeling during that time with no one to lean on.

As the years went by, I developed more signs of anxiety. Things would scare me that never used to, and situations would cause stress that never did before. Large crowds overwhelmed me, and I clung to my mother even tighter when she got out of the hospital, fearing she would leave again. I loved her so incredibly much, but unfortunately, I would never feel that love in return.

One of my therapists in my early 20's told me the best recommendation she had to move on from the trauma was to write it down, crumple it up, and burn in. This would help release the pain and allow me to be free for the future. I did as she said, except when I began to write, the words flowed out so quickly that I had no time to stop and burn them. Before I knew it, I had written 100 pages of memories, and situations that I didn't even know where in there. I had opened a door to a past that I had tried really hard to forget. Reading through it, I couldn't believe how well the story flowed, and I knew I had to turn it into a book.

So, for never being much of a reader, I surely made up for it in my ability to write a book people couldn't put down. It's been almost a decade since I published it, and more people are finding it now than ever before. And although I could now write four more books based on the past several years of trauma that I've gone through with the same people, I think this time I may take my therapists' advice, and crumble them up and allow the pain to slowly turn to ash.