Thread by @kelly_j_baker

For #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth, my memoir about living with mental illness, FINAL GIRL, is only $1.99!

So please consider getting a copy now for you, your friends, your family, or heck, your enemies. (I don't judge, y'all.)

books2read.com/b/finalgirl

So, let's talk about FINAL GIRL a little bit.

A heads up: It's a book #MentalIllness, but it is also a book about childhood abuse, trauma & grief.

If any of those are triggers for y'all, this might not be the book for you.

So, FINAL GIRL didn't start out as a book, which is the case for most of my books.

It started out as a few essays that I wrote over a couple of years about my abusive biodad.

Here's the first one I wrote:

themanifeststation.net/2015/01/22/hau…

What's wild about these first few essays is that I really had no idea that I was writing about my biodad.

I thought I was writing about ghosts, my uncle, and families haunted by trauma.

I didn't realize that my biodad was at the center of that story.

What's more is that it took me quite a few essays & 30+ years to be able to say that what I experienced as a kid was abuse.

I mean, I kind of knew that my childhood was fucked up because I would tell these stories that I thought were funny to folks.

They would look at me strangely & often tell me it wasn't funny.

And I would like, oh, but it actually is.

And they would disagree.

But, calling something abuse felt big to me.

It also seemed like what I experienced, emotional &mental attacks day in & out, wasn't as bad as it could have been.

So, it must not have been abuse, right?

(Yes, my therapist explained to be that I am an excellent minimizer.)

So, I avoided the term "abuse" unless someone else said it & then I tried to pretend that what they were saying wasn't the truth.

(I did a thread about this a little while ago:

https://twitter.com/kelly_j_baker/status/1509580690593132545

)

But something happened in my mid-to-late 30s, I found myself writing more & more about my childhood & my biodad.

I couldn't fucking stop writing about the trauma.

It was like I kept writing about the trauma I experienced to figure it out.

I mean, I had buried that shit deep down & when it popped back up, I pushed it back down.

(This is a terrible long-term strategy, but it was how I coped for a really, really long time.)

Suddenly, I was writing about my biodad who I had cut off from my life when I was 28.

I was trying to face what happened, but I couldn't face it head on.

So, I wrote around it. Hovering nearby but never too close.

I wrote about ghosts. I wrote about whether redemption is possible or not.

I wrote about fairy tales.

therumpus.net/2020/10/26/rum…

I wrote my story again & again in different ways. Trying to figure it out.

Never quite figuring it out. Always trying to.

While I was writing about trauma (& not knowing I was), I was also writing about grief.

I started writing about with #MentalIllness while also refusing to get diagnosed.

(That's a whole other thing. Here's me writing about it: wihe.com/article-detail…)

I would like to say that I had a moment of clarity early on, in which I was like, "I am writing about trauma! I am writing about survival! My writing has a plan!"

Reader, just no, that didn't happen.

What did happen was I wrote an essay, "The Final Girl," published by @The_Rumpus.

I wrote my biodad, a terrible night I'll never forget & how horror taught me how to survive. (CW: child abuse.)

therumpus.net/2018/03/13/the…

Something clicked in my head after I wrote "The Final Girl," I was writing about abuse because I had been abused, but I was also writing about survival because I had fucking survived.

The other essays that became parts of FINAL GIRL clicked into place too.

I was writing about grief because of the losses I survived through. I was writing about living with mental illness & I had survived some close calls.

I was writing about survival.

I was writing about survival.

Huh.

That wasn't what I was expecting but also I couldn't stop writing about it. So, I didn't.

I kept writing essays about survival & eventually those essays became a book.

The hardest book that I have ever written. FULL STOP.

Ever written.

Because with FINAL GIRL, I was writing & rewriting the stories I had told myself my whole life about who I was.

I had told myself everything was my fault because other folks told me it was. I was broken because other folks said I was.

So, at some point, I realized that I was broke but not broken.

I had survived by patching myself up time & time again.

I realizing that patching was our life's work. We do it throughout our whole lives to carry on.

I finally figured out why I was writing about survival. It was another step in my survival. Another move forward. A way to see myself & my life more clearly & define it IN MY OWN TERMS.

So, hell yes, I was a final girl, still standing not at the end of the movie but in my life.

I managed to live through horrors & tell the tale.

Telling the tale, however, was a helluva thing.

And I couldn't tell it all. Some things I can't live through again.

So, I wrote what I could about what I survived.

So, FINAL GIRL is a survival story but also more. It's hard for me to define the more.

Writing the book was the way I realized that survival is a damn miracle.

And we shouldn't ever treat it as anything less.

I hope sharing my story, my terrifying vulnerability & honesty, helps other folks.

I really hope it does.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about FINAL GIRL, @SnowHydro interviewed me about a couple of years ago.

I'm pretty damn honest in the interview too. (No one is surprised.)

therumpus.net/2020/12/30/the…

Also, how it is possible that I don't have a "final girl" tattoo yet?

That is a huge oversight on my part. (Oh, yeah, also, it's a pandemic.)

One more thing:

This book is about serious topics, but I also manage to be funny.

Because being funny about serious shit is still one of my main coping mechanisms.

Oh, and if you want to listen to me talk about FINAL GIRL, I had an amazing conversation with @DaultRadio for the @NotSeenRadio podcast:

thingsnotseenradio.com/shows/2211-bak…

@DaultRadio @NotSeenRadio David asked me about one of the shortest and hardest essays in the book & I am so glad he did.