Why I waited until fifty to write this

For decades the book sat in me like a stone I had learned to walk around. I told myself the story wasn’t mine to tell, that no one would believe it, that the people in it would be hurt by it. All of that was true. None of it was the reason.

The reason was simpler, and worse. If I wrote it down, I would have to believe it happened.

I picked up a pen at fifty, on the other side of the night this book opens on. Five years later I am an author. This is what those five years cost, and what they gave back.