Kid Rex Meets the World...

It's nearly October, which means that my book will be in bookstores everywhere in a matter of mere weeks. My emotions are very mixed. I'm extremely excited to have my work finally out into the world. In a way it's a last chapter to a few very tumultuous years in my life. Though the book deals with anorexia, it's been years since I've actively struggled with that issue. It's odd that I'm going to be regarded as someone who "knows" about that illness, when I now consider myself a survivor, not an expert. Still, in my early twenties, when I was struggling so greatly with this disease, I never would have thought it possible that I would live a happy, normal life. I have to remind myself that there is some element of the miraculous there.
These days I'm mostly preoccupied by the reception that Kid Rex, my baby, will receive by the rest of the world. I talk to my publishers and discussions focus on marketing and booksales, the commercialization of a bit of my soul. But when I imagine the "marketing" of my book, I think of myself doing readings to a small gathering of downtown bohemians in hidden alcove bookstores. I just stumbled upon one the other day on 10th street, called Three Lives and Company Booksellers. I walked in and could see my book happily living there, appropriately going home with that rare breed of human known as the book lover...the real reader. I imagined myself wearing a tweed jacket and my purple Prada glasses (which I don't actually need for reading) and discussing the philosophy of living, the complexities of life, the dangerous, wrenching struggles and the happy, ebuliant times that is the great equalizer among us all.
Finally when I think of my book launch I think of the people who are no longer present in my life since I wrote Kid Rex. Most notably among them are my grandmother, Elena, who died this past February, and my ex-boyfriend Josh. I dedicated the book to my grandmother before any of us knew that she even had lymphoma. I didn't tell her that my work was for her, that she was my primary inspiration in word and in deed...ever. I believe she knew, but I would have loved to see her reading my book and to see her drinking a glass of red wine at a Manhattan bar on the night of my book launch.
As for Josh, he represents heartbreak to me in many ways. He is still a presence in my life, a looming thought and feeling that sometimes manifests itself in the form of a superficial phone call or email. He is with me, but not there. He lived through the anorexia with me, and to my shock it was after I had recovered that the gravity of everything we went through together hit him. We fell apart and I know that he is on his own road now, searching for his own little bit of truth in a world that can seem so huge, so bleak, and simultaneously so manageable, small...even fragile. Josh and I are friends now, joined by a past that only the two of us really know. I hope he finds his way.