"You should write a book"

When I meet new people and have the chance to share the condensed version of my life story, the most common response is, “you should write a book.” Though that is true—and slowly but surely I am doing just that—I’d like to address the comment.

I’m not telling you the plot line of a book. I’m telling you about my actual very real life. I realize that the factual events are so extraordinary it’s hard to still conceive of it as my real and personal experience, but it is. These things happened to me. I felt them. I endured them. It is not a book or a movie. The pain and suffering were real.

My life handed me the material for a book on a silver platter. But today when I look you in the eyes and tell you about my life, please don't reduce it to a work of fiction.

Don’t worry, I was listening, I am writing a book. This has got me thinking, though, that the absurd stories depicted in books and movies had to COME from somewhere, most likely real people’s lives. Then a disconnect grew and society started recognizing certain extraordinary events as more like works of fiction than real life—but originally the works of fiction were based in real lives, if even loosely.

Lives like mine.

Don’t get hung up on bizarre factual events. Those might be foreign to you. But the pain they caused is universally relatable. The next time you read a story of someone who endured some ridiculously absurd event, don’t dismiss it by relating it to a work of fiction. Humanize the story. Think about how they felt.