Life Lines

What did you want to be when you grew up?

A deep sea diver? A lumberjack or an air hostess? A footballer’s wife?

I’ve always had one ambition: to write. I even had a pen name: Emma Swanne, (emphasis on the ‘e’). Friends inked their names on tables and jotters, but I hugged mine close, like a delicious secret. It was a talisman, a promise that one day I would Make It. Authors you see, weren’t like other people. They were mysterious and powerful. Controlled and shiny and polished and clean. Warriors, wielding words and protected by print. Not messy or human.  And definitely not like me.  I was a recovering anorexic, a tanker of hormones, spilling my mess onto every available surface.  But I swore that one day, this would change. I’d write a new story and leave the old one behind.  I’d perfect myself and the evidence would be a literary masterpiece, a mop that would wipe the past clean.

Despite these ambitions, reality hasn’t worked out quite as I’d planned.  I’ve written a book, yes.  But it’s the one I swore I’d never write.  It’s about a recovery I didn’t orchestrate. And it’s the words of the girl I swore I’d leave behind.

I didn’t want to grow up.  I wanted the fairytale: a perfect princess in a perfect world.

The handsome prince.  The dream castle, full of soft furnishings.

The drink that makes you forget . The magic food that makes you slim.

There is no Emma Swanne.  There never was.  But in God’s hands, perhaps even Emma Scrivener can find a happy ending.

3 thoughts on “Life Lines

  1. I’m really looking forward to reading it! I think I’ll be glad that you’ve written it, rather than Emma Swanne.

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