So it happened! I held my book.

So it happened! I held my book.
I was sitting at work when someone dropped two copies on my desk.
For a while, I had wondered how I would react when I finally saw my book. Would I cry? Scream? Be speechless?
It turns out that I did a lot of jumping up and down . . . . and a look-at-how-gorgeous-my-book-is dance [there are no words to describe how silly this was.]
I stared at the book for a long time. I felt the cover, smelled the paper, inspected the binding, appreciated that I didn't look like a freak in my author photo, and oh-ed and ah-ed over the garnet colored endpapers. [Somehow I had forgotten that hardcovers have those.]
Then I ran around the office showing my book to anyone who would talk to me. After I made the rounds, my face was sore from all the smiling.

And then I remembered that thousands of these books are going to be printed and [hopefully] read. Oddly enough, I sometimes forget that--like the process of writing and getting my book published was only for me.
People ask me all the time if that's weird--knowing that strangers will be reading about the worst part of my life. Strangers I can deal with. I don't have to talk to them. I don't have to sit next to them at dinner or in a meeting.
The thing that sometimes freaks me out is that several of my coworkers [and my parents] have read it. Lately, people have been coming up to me at work to tell me congratulations and that they just read my book.
I am always tremendously grateful to hear when someone has read my book. Thrilled if they say they liked it. A little bit sad when they say that they, or someone they know, has an anxiety disorder.

But when the conversation is over, I have to erase it. I can't walk around the office thinking, he knows how I've been on more than a 1/2 dozen different medications or she knows how close I came to hospitalization . . . and then of course, there’s the stuff about guys . . . .

But in reality, I know that what I wrote about isn’t all that different from what other people have gone through. Yeah, the details are different, but the emotions are the same.