BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

I haven’t been on medium for so long that I almost forgot to make this annoucement: I published my book. For those interested, here is the Author’s Note / Trigger Warning. I will link the book below (it is free to read and download).

TRIGGER WARNING: This collection of works follows the themes of addiction, depression, suicide, and love — can’t forget love (the greatest of the addictions — God’s favorite). Oh ya, and perhaps the most triggering thing of all: I talk a lot about God. Some of you may have already stopped reading once you saw the dedication, or maybe you stopped after that last sentence, and that’s okay.

I too have my trauma with organized religion — it’s why I no longer consider myself a Christian. I spent much of my youth as an atheist after being forced into an afterschool Catholic school (what did my parents think would happen by sending me to another school after already dealing with normal school). After getting into an argument with my Catholic teacher about the theory of evolution, I decided to renounce and even curse God. She thought that if we evolved from monkeys then it made no sense for there to still be monkeys. I tried to explain to her that we shared a common ancestor, and that we didn’t “evolve from monkeys” (I was 8 by the way) such a terrible burden for a child to have to correct their elders. I thought to myself that a God with such idiotic followers was surely no God at all, but merely an imaginary friend for simple minded folk to place their blame on when nothing goes their way.

I was lost for a long time. I struggled with depression from a very young age, and I even tried to kill myself a few times before turning double digits (and many more attempts afterwards). There was too much pain and ignorance in the world for me to bear, but the pain of not giving life the chance to improve was much worse. Of course this led to a variety of addictions I used to numb the pain for the time being — it of course only made things worse. If you haven’t realized by now, I haven’t killed myself (nor do I plan on it anymore). I gave life a chance and it has shown me to have its ebbs and flows — the lows were low, but the highs were oh so high.

My life has been a journey with many destinations and many addictions sprinkled in here and there. I love my life, and I love my latest addiction: loving God. My spiritual journey deserves a book of its own, but in short, I can say that I’ve explored every path from science to buddhism to zoroastrianism to various paganisms to every Abrahamic religion, and everything in between. All of it has led me back to Christ. Our faiths are our own. I will not judge you for yours — I only hope that it is grounded in loving forgiveness, and I hope that you will not judge me for mine.

This is a collection of old and new works that I have written and rewritten specifically for my first publication (hence why it is subtitled Firstfruits). These are more than just stories to me — this is my attempt at turning everything cruel in life, and everything worth living for, into words. Not everything has a happy ending, but I believe that to be more relatable.

If it were up to me, I would still be editing this and I would probably never publish it, but a wise man told me to welcome imperfection. These works aren’t perfect and at times I hate what I’ve written, but I hope you get something good out of this.

Believe it or not, I love you — even if I don’t know you, because God loved you first. The world tries to convince us that we are unworthy, but if God loves us — having known us since before our inception — then we must be worthy of infinite love and forgiveness. I believe that if given the chance, you would do anything to prove your worth.

This is The Way We Walk: Firstfruits.

If you wish to read the book in its entirety, then you can do so on my website: www.WrittenByAmorFati.com