r/Memoir

Hi everyone!

I’ve already started writing a novel based on my life experiences surviving childhood/young adulthood trauma and my personal journey through therapy. It’s meant to be an inspiring story based in Sydney Australia with some funny moments to lighten the mood and relatable to millennials/gen z.

However I am worried about my safety around telling my story. I’ve talked to some of my friends about this. Lots of people from health professionals to friends to strangers said that I should write a book but I fear if I use my real name I might be hunted down by my enemies. I have a history of being stalked, harassed and a victim of abuse so naturally, I have had to think about hiding my identity as an extra layer of protection.

Do you know of any authors right now that have told their story but their main character uses a fake name? I thought about giving every single character a made up name including my own.

Then there’s the possibility of using a pen name. Is there any issues I should be aware of when doing this?

Honestly I’m torn between being anonymous and being fully unapologetic and brave.
I personally believe my story deserves to be written and I’m not ashamed of my life so I’d like to take ownership of it. But maybe not if it’s too dangerous.

Thank you for any information and advice.

PIECE 1 — THE PROLOGUE

"Hey kiddo, how was practice?" I ask as my fourteen year old climbs in the back seat.

"Fine, mom."

But she doesn't seem fine. She usually has a lot to say. I ask if she is feeling alright as we pull out of the parking lot. A silver car runs the red light and nearly hits us as I slam on the brakes, throwing us both forward. Emma screams and then goes silent. I look back and she is passed out, only the seat belt holding her upright.

"Emma! Emma!" I scream. Nothing. I can see she is breathing but no response.

I race home — we only live a few minutes away — calling her name. Silence.

Then a deep breath. I look back. She looks around, looks at me confused, and passes out again.

What the actual hell is going on?

I pull up my husband's name on my phone and call. Two rings and he answers.

"Something is wrong with Emma. We need to take her in."

"I'm on my way."

We know the routine well now from months of anaphylaxis ER visits. But this is different.

In the driveway, I sprint around the car and throw open the door. She is starting to come to.

"Hey baby, are you ok?"

She nods. I help her, wobbly as a newborn calf, out of the car toward the front porch. She stops abruptly in the front yard and stares at the house.

"The house is going to catch on fire. It's going to burn down."

"What? What are you talking about, baby?"

"I've seen this before, exactly like this, and the house burns down." She's starting to panic.

That's when the cold terror started in my bones.

"Well, what if we changed the picture? Would that help?"

"Maybe, mom."

I broke a branch off the bush beside the walk.

"There. It's different now."

Satisfied, she lets me lead her inside.

I sit her on the couch and call to my nine year old to get her some water. She passes out again briefly, and when she comes to she isn't making sense — words tumbling out in the wrong order, sentences that start and don't finish. I call the vision doctor to ask what to do about the MRI scheduled in the morning. They tell me to take her to a children's hospital and get the MRI there.

David walks in the door and we both help her to the car. I buckle her up like she is two, kiss her forehead, and close the door. David starts the hour drive to the children's hospital.

I watch them pull away. Wave and smile, but it doesn't reach my eyes. The minute they are out of sight, I start crying.

My phone rings not even five minutes later. It's him.

"She's talking about the sky. She says there is purple rain falling from the sky. What the fuck is going on?"

I'm terrified.

"I don't know, hon. Surely the doctors will know. Just get her there and we will get some answers."

Oh how naive I was.

PIECE 2 — THE ER

"Please, mommy, help me. I'm scared. It hurts so much."

She's looking at me the way she did at four years old — like I can still fix anything. Then her eyes close and she slips unconscious again.

My fifteen year old and I are in the emergency room. She came in complaining of extreme neck pain, headache, and vomiting. We tried to manage it at home but she kept getting worse, so we finally made the call to bring her in. They got us into the back fairly quickly, but we have been waiting a long time in this room. Easily over 45 minutes and, other than an initial check by the resident, nothing has been done. The resident noted left side weakness in her neuro exam. They haven't hooked her to a monitor. They've done nothing but leave us waiting.

Emma comes to and starts groaning in pain.

"When are they coming, mommy?"

"I don't know, baby. Soon."

I open the door to see if I can find anyone. No one is paying me any attention. I go back in the room and we wait.

She starts shivering uncontrollably, her teeth chattering hard like those old wind-up toys.

"Mommy, I'm so cold," she manages between chatters.

It was sudden — she had been burning hot just minutes before. I pull the blanket out from under her. Not enough. I add the folded blanket from the chair. Still freezing. I push the call button and request more blankets. A nurse appears with heated ones a few minutes later.

I ask if the doctor will be in soon.

"Hopefully," she says, and leaves.

Finally the doctor walks in. She doesn't examine Emma. She looks me in the eye.

"I can see all of the notes — electronic records are a thing now."

"Great. Then you know she has had a lot going on since April."

"Yes. I can see all of the doctors and specialists."

I start to talk. She cuts me off.

"I'm not doing anything here today. Your doctors already have a plan. You need to take your daughter home and follow it."

"What are you talking about? We don't have a plan. No one has figured anything out yet."

"Yes you do. Your rheumatologist has a plan. Take your daughter home and get her CBT therapy."

"Therapy? What does that have to do with her neck and headache?"

"There is nothing wrong with her neck."

"She can barely move it."

So she does a neck exam, telling Emma to touch her chin to her chest. Emma can't do it from the pain, but she manages to look slightly down. The doctor is nearly shouting at her to do it more. So Emma, always compliant, pushes a little further — and breaks into tears.

"There. She can look down. It isn't meningitis. Go home. Get therapy."

And with that, she walks out.

I am absolutely dumbfounded. I have never been spoken to like that in my life, let alone by a doctor. The nurse walks back in to start discharge.

I protest. Something is really wrong with my child and we don't have a plan with rheumatology. Emma is low in ferritin so we are supplementing, but that is all rheumatology has done. There must be a mistake.

Emma starts shivering again.

I tell them I'm not taking her home like this.

The nurse leaves. The resident comes back in and hooks her to the monitors. Then leaves.

She passes out again. When she comes to she doesn't know where she is or how she got hooked up to the machine. She is frantic. I calm her the best I can.

Then the staring starts. She goes completely still, eyes open, non-responsive. I call her name several times. Nothing. Just that blank stare. Then she snaps out of it — laughing. Maniacal, unhinged laughter.

The nurse comes in to check on her.

While the nurse is there, Emma starts talking about her neck.

"It hurts so much," she says. Then, almost cheerfully: "I named it. Her name is Linda."

She looks at the nurse conspiratorially.

"Linda is so silly. Bad Linda. Hurting me. Bad, bad Linda." She gestures toward her back. "And this is Jeff. Jeff is an asshole. He hurts really, really, really bad. Fucking Linda and Jeff."

With that she dissolves into maniacal laughter — then cries out in immediate pain, grabbing her neck from the sudden movement.

"I can't be doing that. Linda and Jeff are going to kick my ass for laughing." The words come out in a Southern drawl she lost when we moved north over a decade ago.

I'm really scared now.

No one comes.

She moves on to her fingers.

"This one is Ginger. This one is Phillip. This one is Dolphin." On and on.

I'm crying silently.

The nurse comes back and sits Emma up. Emma protests — the movement hurts her head. She starts introducing her fingers again.

"This is Ginger. This is Phillip." She stops. Her face crumples.

"I can't remember his name," she says, staring at her third finger. She starts to cry.

"I think it might be Elephant?" I offer.

"No," she wails, "it isn't Elephant. He doesn't look like an Elephant."

She's really upset now, starting to sob. Then suddenly she stops.

"Oh. I remember. He's Dolphin."

All smiles. She continues introducing her fingers to the nurse, who tells her she is obviously quite creative.

I ask when someone is coming back. Obviously Emma is not herself.

She says she'll check.

She comes back with discharge papers and the resident.

They aren't doing anything further, the resident tells me matter-of-factly. They're discharging us with a pack of heat patches for her neck muscle soreness.

"But look at her. The nurse just saw it herself."

"We are discharging you."

"She is sick."

"We aren't doing anything further."

"Then put in our chart that we are leaving under protest."

"Fine."

They don't.

They wheel her to the door. I can barely get her to the car — the pain of being upright is too intense. She has to lie down the whole way home. As we drive she passes out periodically, laughs like the Mad Hatter in between, and lodges ongoing complaints about what an asshole Jeff is.

The confession lived in her notes app for three weeks before she ever sent it.

Every night, she rewrote it.

Sometimes it sounded too dramatic. Sometimes too cold. Sometimes too obvious. Other times she convinced herself it was embarrassing and deleted the entire thing before typing it all over again.

She hated how much power one person could have over her thoughts without even knowing it.

His name was Anthony , and somehow he had become the center of small moments in her life without trying. It wasn’t like in movies where music played every time he walked into a room. It was quieter than that. More dangerous.

It was remembering tiny things.

The way his laugh sounded unexpectedly soft when he was genuinely amused.

The way he spoke casually, like someone who never realized people paid attention to him.

The way seeing his name appear on her phone could completely ruin or save her mood in seconds.

She never planned on liking him.

Actually, she tried very hard not to.

At first, it was harmless. Just another crush she assumed would disappear after a few weeks. But feelings were annoying like that. The more she ignored them, the stronger they became.

Soon, she found herself rereading old conversations at midnight.

Then wondering if he noticed when she got nervous around him.

Then imagining impossible scenarios she knew would never happen.

It got exhausting pretending she didn’t care.

And maybe that was why she finally decided to tell him.

Not because she expected him to magically fall in love with her. Not because she thought life worked like romance movies.

She just wanted peace.

So on a warm Friday afternoon in June, after pacing around her room for nearly an hour, she finally pressed send.

The second the message delivered, panic hit her instantly.

“What did I just do?”

She threw her phone onto her bed like it had personally betrayed her.

For the next hour, she couldn’t sit still. She walked in circles around her room, opened apps she didn’t care about, drank water she wasn’t thirsty for, and checked her phone every thirty seconds even though no notifications appeared.

Then finally—

Buzz.

Her stomach dropped.

“hi”

That was it.

One word.

She stared at it so long she almost laughed.

Another message appeared.

“sorry I didn’t see your message until now”

She swallowed hard.

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Every second felt cruel.

“I didn’t know that you had feelings for me.”

Her chest tightened instantly.

There it was.

The truth out in the open now. No taking it back.

Then came the message she had secretly prepared herself for but still wasn’t ready to read.

“To be honest with you I don’t know I feel the same way.”

Her eyes stopped there first.

Everything after blurred together for a second.

“It isn’t that there is anything wrong with you or anything it’s just that I am not ready for a relationship yet.”

She reread the message over and over, trying to decide which hurt more: the rejection itself or how kind he was about it.

Because kindness made it harder to be angry.

If he had been rude, maybe she could’ve hated him. Maybe she could’ve deleted the chat and moved on immediately.

But he wasn’t cruel.

He was honest.

And honesty had a different kind of pain attached to it.

She sat quietly on the edge of her bed, the late afternoon sunlight spilling through her curtains while her phone rested in her hands.

For a moment, she felt stupid.

Not because she liked him.

But because she had hoped.

Hope was embarrassing sometimes.

Still, after several minutes, she typed back:

“I understand.”

Short. Simple. Safe.

But what she really meant was:

I understand, but this still hurts.

I understand, but part of me wishes things were different.

I understand, but I’m glad I told you anyway.

After that conversation, things became strange.

Not bad strange.

Just unfamiliar.

Like standing in a room after everyone else had left.

They still spoke occasionally, but there was a carefulness now. A distance neither of them knew how to address directly.

Summer passed slowly after that.

Some days she convinced herself she was completely over him.

Other days his name appearing on her screen still made her heart react before her brain could stop it.

Then October arrived.

The air became colder. Leaves turned gold and orange. People started talking about Halloween and exams and winter plans.

And somehow, despite everything, she remembered his birthday.

Not just remembered it.

Remembered it weeks early.

She hated that.

“You are actually insane,” she muttered to herself while standing in a store aisle staring at birthday cards.

There were hundreds of them.

Funny ones.

Serious ones.

Cards with terrible jokes she knew he’d probably roll his eyes at.

She picked one up, then another.

Finally, she found one simple enough not to seem weird.

At least she hoped it didn’t seem weird.

As she paid for it, embarrassment crawled up her neck.

Why am I doing this?

But deep down, she already knew the answer.

Because despite everything, she cared.

Not in the dramatic way she used to.

Not in the hopeful way either.

Just quietly.

Softly.

Enough to remember.

Still, she couldn’t give it to him herself. That felt too intense somehow. So she asked Maria to pass it along instead.

“That’s less creepy, right?” she asked nervously.

Maria laughed. “You overthink everything.”

And maybe she did.

Later that evening, after staring at their chat for ten full minutes, she finally sent him a message.

“Hi.”

Then another.

“Happy Birthday in Advance.”

Then another.

“I know you got my birthday card.”

The second she sent it, regret hit instantly.

Why did I say that first?

She quickly typed again.

“But I am not stalking you.”

Terrible.

Absolutely terrible.

“I only remembered last month.”

That sounded worse somehow.

“I didn’t want to look like a stalker, that’s why I asked Maria to give to you.”

She covered her face with both hands.

“And btw I am not that crazy lol.”

There.

Now she definitely sounded crazy.

She dropped onto her bed dramatically, convinced she would never emotionally recover from this interaction.

Hours passed before he replied.

“Ok?”

She blinked.

That was it?

Just “Ok?”

Suddenly every ounce of embarrassment transformed into annoyance.

“What?”

“Just an ‘ok’”

“Never mind.”

She locked her phone and tossed it aside.

“Never doing that again,” she muttered.

But later that night, another notification appeared.

“I never expected this lol”

“Sorry”

“I was really confused during the time because I barely told anyone my birthday”

“Thanks tho”

And somehow, reading those messages made her smile.

Not because it meant he liked her back.

Because it didn’t.

Not really.

But because for the first time in months, things felt real again instead of awkward memories frozen inside a chat history.

He wasn’t mocking her.

He wasn’t annoyed.

He was just confused. Human. Imperfect.

Just like her.

That night, she lay awake staring at the ceiling while her phone rested beside her.

And slowly, she realized something important.

Maybe love wasn’t always about being chosen back.

Maybe sometimes love was simply about bravery.

About allowing yourself to care even when there were no guarantees.

About saying the truth out loud instead of hiding it forever.

And although her story with Anthony never became the kind of romance she once imagined late at night, it still became something she would remember.

Because years from now, she knew she probably wouldn’t remember every embarrassing text she sent.

But she would remember the feeling of finally being honest.

And maybe that mattered more than the ending itself.