Mass

Book in hardback charts today.

One last time...

Someone e-mailed yesterday saying they'd just randomly come across my blog, and asked me whether it was true, whether I did actually live in my car for all that time. I can't believe someone is still asking that — I don't know whether to scream or cry.
Most of me wants to just shrug it off, not even bother answering. But a tiny part of me, some soft part in under the ribs, wishes they could feel some of the pain still here in my back and neck that I'm still seeing a physiotherapist for — the way the muscles in them contract at the slightest onset of cold, as if they still remember how it was out there the winter before last; or about the thyroxine tablets I'm now having to take because of the hypothyroid problem I developed during those nine months in the car — because my hormones and metabolism got so messed up with all the stress and fear and hunger, and all that brutal cold. Or the way I wake at night, occassionally still sometimes, in a panic, disorientated, facing that big, black emptiness again that I woke to night after night in the woods, my body scrunched up between the sheets the way it had to be sleeping across the front seats, feeling tiny, not knowing which way around I am sleeping, ready to flip myself over to ease the pain I used to have every night in every part of me, with my neck and legs shoved up against the car doors — all that fear as I look around me, that for a long, dark moment I'm gripped with again. Believe it or don't believe it, all I will say, one last time, is that yes, it is completely true, every last moment of it, I did end up having some kind of breakdown and lived, hiding out in my car, not knowing what to do or where to turn, waiting for it to pass, for the healing calm of the trees and nature to strengthen me. And it was terrifying how easy it was to fall off the radar and into that spiral downwards, how it all happened so quickly, as you'll see if you read the book.
Some respect for the courage and pain it took to write my heart and soul in a book which hopefully will go on to help others too, would be the decenter thing — or, at least no emails questioning my reality. It might also be good to realise that some people don't fit into any of the boxes you try to put them into, no matter how big you try to make them. And yes, even people who end up homelesss can read and write — and all had lives before getting there.

Running on empty

No matter how many people I surround myself with I can't get rid of this feeling of loneliness, or the quake inside when I think of the future. Must do something about it before its too late. I admit it here publically so that I don't go on pretending that everything is okay.
Does the prentense that everything is okay inside, ever become the reality that everything actually is okay? Maybe not, maybe that's how it is for everyone.

Radio

I came into London today to talk on a local radio show about my book. It was a very strange thing to do. Not only sitting in a dark booth at BBC studios infront of a console with such a bewildering array of buttons and dials that it looked like we were about to take off, but just the talking about the book at all. Writing it was bad enough. It is definitely not a comfortable thing to publicise. I have been psyching myself up for it for weeks, though I was very glad to get it over and done with today, particulary given the cold I have. But the presenter's reaction was so lovely, and in a way unexpected. I assumed like most people his interest would be in the homelessness bit and how I wrote the blog. He did talk about the shame and secrecy of homelessness, and how it had been for me living in the car for those nine months, but he focussed mostly on the earlier part of the book — on some of the childhood stuff. He said he had young daughters himself and couldn't imagine a man wanting to do anything but protect them - that bit I did expect from him - and that he thought these stories should be told - I probably also expected that, though it was good to hear. But the thing he said that made me not know what to say back was that he almost wanted to apologise for what happened to me. I didn't know what to say. In ways I still feel almost apologetic myself for having written about my life, in sometimes such graphic terms. But I also think part of moving beyond such experiences is having them heard and people not being appalled and rejecting you for them, I think that is what finally ends that shame. It is also what chips away at that taboo about talking about it. Abuse is a dark, grotty subject, nobody would choose to talk about it, but silence makes it perfect for abusers. What they need to know, those people who do it, is that the children they abuse don't stay children. That one day they will grow up, and some of them will go on to write books, books about their abuse and the people involved. One day, this child will not be a child. And they will not forget — children do not grow out of their memories, they will not forget.

I wasn't sure what reaction I'd get to having told my story — the last time I told it I was eleven years old, and the reaction to telling and lifelong effects of it I wrote about in length in the book — so it was a huge relief to get the interviewer's reaction today on the radio. Thank you. And apologies to any listeners for my streaming cold and hacking cough as I spoke.

Mayday...

My book is out today. Hugely stressfull...
.