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But most people feel a milder form of what I do, and they think of it as just an “inkling,” a “sneaking suspicion,” or they get the “impression” something is coming. They might even get an unexplainable sense of foreboding.
Yet what I feel, what I hear and see inside my head when my walls start whispering their bitter not-nothings, is so much… more. So much more intense and impossible to ignore. With my artistic mind—in which I use words to paint a picture instead of brushes and wet colors—I see what my voices are saying in vivid images, watch the images form a scene behind my eyelids, the scenes adding up to the length of a whole movie, and I’m sure if I let them continue on with their repetitive ramblings, they could show me every avenue and outcome of every decision of an entire lifetime.
If these walls could talk?
No. There’s no if. They do. They don’t shut up. And for the first time in my life, I don’t want them to. Because I need those whispering walls to protect me.
Even if it’s from myself.
Part 1: FIN
Please read this note from the author:
Dearest Reader,
If this is your first venture into my Club Alias World, welcome! If you are a longtime lover of my beloved series, thank you for sticking around through so many of my characters’ stories. It means the world to me that y’all continue to beg for more and more of them.
This book, you might have noted, is a little different than the others. For one, it’s a cliffhanger. I am so freaking sorry to those who hate cliffies, but it just had to be done, and here’s why.
Even if you don’t know a single personal thing about this little hippy author—oop! Sound vaguely familiar?—I’m sure you could tell that Sienna seems a bit… real? A bit more human than the average heroine? At least, that’s the nice way of putting it, when my intrusive thoughts want to say things like “trainwreck” and a “should-be-padded-room resident.”
This story is a passion project of mine.
This story isn’t written like a lot of the others, with questions like “What will readers think?” “Will they hate that it’s going to be a duet?” “What about my instalove enthusiasts? Will they hate that she has more than one prospect and hasn’t even met any of them in person by the end of Part 1?” in mind.
Okay, that’s a total lie. Of course I asked myself those questions. My brain forms questions inside my head without my consent all the time. But the difference is, I stuck to my guns—with the encouragement of my girls Barb and Vanessa, who kept reminding me this was a book I wanted to write for MYSELF, so I could read about a heroine like me and imagine her… not being “fixed” but learning she’s not actually broken to begin with.
Because as much as we use words like “disorder” and “illness” when it comes to mental health, it does not change the fact that the person who has it is a HUMAN. And just like everyone in the world has a unique fingerprint, we need to remember that everyone in the world has a different mind. And I wanted to write about a heroine who goes through a not-so-instant process of realizing she’s not LESS THAN, because of her mental health. She is also not TOO MUCH, as so many people have told her—me—throughout her life.
She’s just fucking right.
The cute sign you see at HomeGoods that says “You are exactly who you are meant to be in the world” or whatever, may be cliche, but when you really think about it, they ain’t lyin’. If we took away all the “mental illness” in the world, what would we be left with?
The answer is not perfect happiness.
It’s actually pretty fucking boring.
All the art and stories and creativity that fills the world with color and excitement, there’s a very high chance it came from someone who’s “not quite right in the head.”
I told a friend recently, “It’s sad, but at this point, I don’t know who I would be without my voices,” talking about my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and intrusive, repetitive thoughts. And they responded, “Nobody.”
And of course my first reaction was to be slightly hurt. Like, damn, bruh. But then I remembered who I was talking to. My bestie with Asperger’s Syndrome, who just tells me like it is and literally cannot concern themselves with things like tone and wording.
They continued, “Without your voices, who would’ve told you all your characters’ stories? So you wouldn’t be an author. Who would get you to do crazy shit like jump in a dumpster to rescue plants, when you couldn’t even previously keep a cactus alive? So you wouldn’t be a crazy plant lady. Who would’ve made you leave your brother’s house in the middle of the night to go meet some guy off the internet at a Denny’s, which eventually led to you falling in love with his best friend, having three daughters, and now being married for over twelve years? So you wouldn’t be a wife and mom. You’d be nobody, because you wouldn’t have anything telling you to LIVE.” (Read the entire story of that insane-o time in my life in The Blogger Diaries)
