Anticipanicked...

Well the book launches in less than three weeks...and I am anticipanicked, you know that great combination of anticipation and panic?  Well, I am there.

I am also:

Thrervous — thrilled + nervous. 

Eekstatic — eek + ecstatic. 

Terrifizzed — terrified with an undercurrent of fizzy excitement.

Exterrorated — excited + terrified + exhilarated.

Thrillified — thrilled + terrified. 

Exhilarified — exhilarated + terrified. 

Terrillated — terrified + exhilarated. 

Apparently I am also hellbent on coming up with new words to describe my current state of being. The words we currently use just don’t seem to accurately describe where I am, how I feel.

My deadline to have it to the printer is Friday.  We do not have a cover.  And the interior design isn’t complete...My editor keeps telling me we will likely get it done a day early, but I am skeptical.  Right now early is a pipe dream, I am just praying we get it done Friday...

I was reading it one more time, this time in printed version before publication.  I am super proud of what I have written.  I think it is creative, honest and authentic.  I do NOT know if anyone else will love it or think so.  And I guess that doesn’t completely matter.  Although, you know that it matters a great deal to me.

I feel EXACTLY like I did when I launched the blog:  scared that no one would read it and equally scared that everyone would...and so it seems, this is a place I return to.

I wrote the book so that people would read it.  But is is a hard read about a hard subject matter: abuse, and addiction but also healing and recovery.  It is an honest exposé of trauma and self destruction, but it also about redemption and reclamation.  Fuck, why couldn’t I just write some fiction and be done with it?

But that is not who I am as a writer.  I am a non-fiction person.  I write about what I know, what I believe, what I think, what I experience.  I read fiction all the time and marvel at the creativity and the stories.   But I seem to be a person who needs to talk about real life.  My life.  And I know there are a fair amount of people (my children) who would just rather I not.  And while I so want to honor that for them, I can’t.  This is my life and my story and my healing and my trauma and I need to write about it, I need to share it.  Not at them. In all likelihood they will not even read it. Which is likely for the best. They are not featured prominently, maybe that is for another book later on.  But this one, this one is all about me. And the secrets I have kept and what doing that has done to me...

I am terrillated to be putting it out there.  And there is such a large part of me that wants to just not do it.  But I have come this far and it is time.  And I feel mostly ready...mostly.  So I prepare myself to make myself vulnerable in the largest, most public way...

Again, still...

Exterrorated feels like the best word to launch a memoir in October...