Writing a book was never on my radar. I used writing as a blueprint for my depression.
I thought writing everything down was going to help me solve the mystery of my mind and why I was struggling so much. During my first full time treatment experience, I was given a book written by a woman who had gone through an eating disorder. As I read, I decided to highlight the parts that I most related to so I could give my loved ones some understanding through her writing.
I expected there to be more, but it didn’t go into depth like I had hoped. I continued looking for more highlighting candidates and came up with nothing. The stories I came across were too linear, too softened as to not make the reader uncomfortable.
I needed uncomfortable. I needed people to know more than just that I was hurting, but exactly how it felt and what was going through my prison of a mind.
I wrote in my journal, but nothing I expected to share. During my second time around in treatment, one of the staff told me they could see the dialogue going through my head as I stared down my plate of food. Because she said that, I wrote out a typical conversation between my “eating disorder brain” and my rational brain.
I showed my therapist and she asked that I read it on family night when the loved ones all come to the treatment center to learn how to support us. I was called up to read and afterwards many parents said they’d finally started to understand why we can’t “just eat”, they started to understand the complexity of an eating disorder.
It was uncomfortable, embarrassing, and heartbreaking, but it made sense out of something so intangible to those who didn’t go through what I went through. I knew I wanted to make the writing that someone could highlight and hand to their loved ones with confidence that it would break down the barrier. This book Lost and Lived In was going to be different than the rest, unprocessed, raw, and unphased by who may become uncomfortable.
I knew to really make this stuff tangible to people, I was going to leave nothing unsaid.
I picked apart every thought, compulsion, and event. I take the reader through my darkest depression, OCD, anorexia, alcohol abuse, and my sexual assaults. I expose memories that were kept so close to me for so long.
Writing this book “Lost and Lived In” was an emotional roller coaster as I cried for the me that had gone through these things, but at the same time it was therapeutic. When the book was published, I was scared for my deepest darkest secrets to be out for the world to know. Nothing about it is watered down. It’s a truth that needed to be set free.
I went from giving up and wanting nothing to do with recovery to motivation and healing.
I wrote about every step of the way whether it was forward or backward that got me to where I am today. My loved ones were able to read this and understand, my peers were able to relate and learn. Hope is what readers will take away with them. I am going to spread my message as far as it will take me, from treatment centers to schools, in hopes that even one person can be changed by it. No one should have to go through this alone.
