“A story that explores the fragile strength within all of us”

A message from your daughter,

If you had met me prior to today, you likely know at least two of three facts: that I have had an eating disorder, that I was writing a book, and that I have always been single—three facts that appear independent of one another and yet, are inseparable as I have found they are bound together by the same unanswered questions about desire and discipline, and about what it means to wait for one’s life to begin.

Had you told me when I was six or seven that I would be hospitalized at fifteen for anorexia, that the next fifteen years would be shaped by a book I could neither finish nor abandon, and that I would remain single throughout it, I would not have believed you—not because the events themselves were unimaginable, but because they contradicted the story I was already telling myself. I liked food. I earned good grades. I was special. 

What followed instead was a long education in contradiction: years in which English teachers—from third grade through my third year at King’s—returned my papers with concern rather than confidence, pointing out failures of spelling, grammar, comprehension, the basic mechanics of grasping a text; years in which I continued to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that validation would arrive from outside myself, that someone—a partner, an agent, an opportunity would appear and confirm what I could not yet confirm on my own.

That didn’t happen.

What arrived instead was an eating disorder, and then a book, and then the gradual realization that neither was incidental: that the disorder was a way of controlling what could be controlled when other forms of certainty failed, and that the book was an attempt to make sense of the waiting, and to impose narrative on a life that felt stalled and unresolved.

I have only allowed myself to identify as a writer in the last year. It was difficult to look in the mirror and make a positive claim to the very thing I had been projecting for so long, because the way I write is inseparable from who I am. So, to assert authorship felt dangerously close to self-belief.

I understand now that no one will ever care about this book as much as I have, which is precisely why I chose to self-publish: to stand up and validate it in the way I once imagined another would, which ironically, contradicts the belittling nature that had governed so many of my decisions. The writing in this book is good. The story is interesting. But it’s the character. The flawed, imperfect girl, who is entirely recognizable that makes her someone to be very proud of.  

I hope that in reading my story, you recognize something of yourself. It isn’t a special story—it’s a common one. The difference is that I took the time to tell it, and to say: I’m done.

This book, then, immortalizes a particular period of my life: the years in which illness and ambition mirrored one another; the way restraint masqueraded as discipline; the belief that meaning would arrive later and in full, as compensation for endurance. But what it ultimately records is something quieter and harder won—the long, messy, and necessary process of realizing that the only validation I was waiting for was my own. The very thing my dad addressed to me in his letter…

I publish this book in order to keep the meaning exposed, if only long enough for me to realize my life never started, like all of yours, because it never stopped. So, thank you for giving me a chance & taking the time to read it. 

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