Fifty Years in My Hands
Finally real
The box from Amazon arrived yesterday. Heavy. I knew what was inside but still wasn’t prepared for the weight of it—and I don’t mean pounds.
I cut the tape, pulled back the flaps, and there they were. Rows of spines. My name. That kid on the cover, twenty one years old, no idea what was coming.
Fifty years. That’s how long this book has been trying to exist. Started as scribbled notes in the margins of my life, became drafts that got lost, found, rewritten, abandoned, resurrected. And now here it is—a physical object I can hold in my hands.
There’s something about a book that a screen can’t replicate. The smell of ink and paper. The way the pages fan when you thumb through them. The fact that it will still exist if the power goes out.
I pulled one from the stack, turned it over, opened it somewhere in the middle. Read a few lines. Thought: I wrote that. That really happened.
The memoir is still free on Substack—that hasn’t changed. But if you want something you can hold, something you can dog-ear or leave on a shelf, there’s nothing quite like a real book.
Fifty years. Finally real.