That’s the working title of my autobiography. I think it would sell. It’s got the tabloid sensationalism that the American public demands. The title is a take on Judy Blume’s Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing, which was my favorite book when I was in none other than fourth grade. A friend of mine insists that I call it Tales Of A Teenage Crackwhore instead, but I think that may be pushing it. I’m not sure that booksellers across America would want the word “whore” gracing their shelves.

The thing is, that is just one chapter in my autobiography. It happens to be one of the most sensational, but it’s not the only one. There are other chapters that are just as shocking. One even precedes the chapter on crackwhoreism. I’ve experienced some really horrible things in my life. Most of them stem from experiences in my childhood like a domino effect. There are things in my past that I don’t like thinking about. These things shaped and molded me into who I am, whether I wanted it or not.

Like most people who experience trauma, I don’t like thinking about these chapters in my past, but I wrote them all down anyway just as they happened or how I remember that they happened. It was cathartic for me. It was poor man’s therapy.

What I didn’t reckon on though is that, once I had gotten them out, they remained there in a twisted pile of debris, floating around in my mind. These memories and experiences bumped into each other, generally making a mess of my analytical thinking. I had dragged the bottom of the lake and all of the silt, beer bottles and old shoes were cluttering my brain. Perhaps that’s the reason I haven’t gone back and edited it. I haven’t even read it. I am not really ready to go there again. I have no intention of publishing it or even allowing anyone to read it until I am. It would kill my parents to read it anyway.

So, while my entire past sits in a file called autobiography.final, I continue living in the present. One of these days, I’d like to get around to thinking about the future, but for now, the present is good enough. The future and the past will just have to wait.