I AM PUBLISHING A BOOK

an actual, real book!!!!!

I’ve dreamed about publishing a book and calling myself an author for years. I said I was going to “just do it,” like that is an easy, simple thing that you can “just do.”

I’ve always loved writing, but in the technical, thesis-driven, argumental way. I primarily wrote essays throughout high school and college. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in English and Communications. I worked at my college’s Writing Center as a tutor. I planned to work in PR or Publishing. I took a single creative writing course my freshman year, loved it, but never came back to it until after I graduated. Why? I could not tell you. Maybe it was the fear and intimidation of creating my own stories. Peers of mine had been writing stories their whole lives: creative writing was for them, not me. It wasn’t until I was grappling with leaving a three-year-relationship that the words started to come to me. I remember writing them late at night in my notes app and hiding the screen. When I left the relationship, which is an underrated very-hard-thing-to-do that took months to find the courage, I felt empowered in a way I had never felt before. The words were spilling out of me. I was writing more than I ever had in my life.

This was just six months before Covid hit in March of 2020, and you can guess what happens next: the words kept coming. I was bored, I was scared, and I had nothing better to do. I created my Instagram page @reminderstomyfutureself and began posting my writing. I began creating collages to use as backgrounds for my poems so they didn’t look so plain—this was something I loved doing since I was young—and it provided a kind of therapy I didn’t know was available to me. As my writing evolved, my art evolved. The page was anonymous, and I can still remember the fear I felt whenever I showed someone for the first time. It was a hobby until it was a lifeline.

My 19-year-old sister Cassidy died 8 months into Covid. The brightest, boldest, most beautiful girl in the room was anxious, depressed, and losing hope that life would ever get better. Being sent home from college, stuck inside our parents’ house, and the dooming fate of the world did not help. She was in and out of treatment centers that terrified her, attending partial programs while balancing her sophomore year of college, and coming out of a relationship that she was both dependent on and consumed by. My sister talked about wanting to die bluntly and openly since she was in her early teens, but always played it off in the way Gen-Z tends to do when it feels like the entire population is depressed. “I’m not serious.” “I wouldn’t ever actually do that.” I never thought it was funny. It fucking terrified me. It didn’t help that she was the most melodramatic person I had ever met in my life. She was funny and sharp, always lighting up the room she was in and the people in it. She gave money to every homeless person she could afford to (she never could afford to). She was kind. She was stubborn. She once drove 30 minutes to meet me on a hike because she didn’t want me to go alone. It was genuinely hard not to like her. You want to know one of the worst parts? I think the only person who didn’t like her was her.

I would list reason after reason she couldn’t leave, call my parents whenever her boyfriend called in a panic that he was scared. This went on for months: months of going to sleep and praying she would wake up; months of trying to fix someone else; months of learning the hard way that you can’t. Dozens of therapists, medications, hypnotizing, crystals—she tried everything.

We lost her the morning of November 29, 2020. We were supposed to meet at a coffee shop that morning to have an intervention I had planned with a family friend. It was 11 a.m. and she never slept that late. Her roommates video called me over Instagram while I was making turkey soup from Thanksgiving leftovers. I handed the phone to my mom to answer. I couldn’t do it. I just knew.

My forecoming book “You Look Like You’re Looking For Something” is a love letter to Cassidy and a love letter to anyone grieving the loss of someone they love; it is evidence that I survived the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Writing stopped being a hobby a long time ago, and now I am going to make it my career. As soon as I’m done editing (which will surely be the death of me!), it will be available to pre-order on Amazon as an e-book and as soon as I figure out how, a hardcover. it’s full of poetry, prose, and art. it is how I got through the past two years of my life. it is a story of love, perseverance, and loyalty.

and it’s all for her.

thank you for being here.

karlie

you can find me on instagram here and here, my website, or rewind’s website.