Emo Reality
The Biography of Teenage Borderline Personality Disorder
by Jerold Daniels
Narrated by Alex Swan
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Pub Date 28 Jul 2023 | Archive Date 31 Aug 2023
Description
When Lina’s idyllic childhood descends into mental chaos in her teenage years, Lina resorts to recording her thoughts in diaries, online chats and emails to make sense of her anguish. Through Lina’s heart-wrenching words, the reader steps into her broken inner world to experience first-hand the obsessions, irrationality, angst and ruthlessness of teenage borderline personality disorder. Emo Reality shines a light into the dark corners of adolescent mental illness, proving that this disorder is not just a phase, and demonstrating its ravages not just upon an individual, but also upon a whole family.
Publishers Weekly Booklife: "Unflinching novel of growing up with borderline personality disorder.
This heart-wrenching novel-as-memoir, drawn from the experiences of author Daniel’s daughter, explores the experience of a young girl with borderline personality disorder. Through fictionalized diary entries, online posts, and emails, this firsthand personal account is told in vivid detail as Lina, growing up, contends with and descends into the muddled, often pitiless thoughts consuming her mind. Sharing her life story from early childhood into her 20s, and exploring family dynamics, self-esteem issues, mood swings—'When my best friend kept talking, I punched her'—and her feeling that 'the whole world was out to get me,' this memoir is insightful and educational in explaining the inner workings of a mind controlled by mental illness, building to a welcome burst of hope and recovery in the final pages.
Lina is an angry, depressed young girl whose 'false memories' cause her to nurture an irrational hatred of her family and most authoritative figures in her life. Though she is highly intelligent, Lina sabotages her education to spite her parents and is constantly rebelling against their concerns and advice for her life path. A talented writer and singer, Lina fluctuates between dreams of being a tattoo artist and being a famous actress or musician. In her states of delusion, Lina believes the only cause for her lack of success is the overbearing rules of her father, who is often away on business. In truth, Lina and her older sister, who also is sinking into depression, have little structure and guidance in their lives aside from him.
At times wrenching in its candidness—there are references to suicidal thoughts and rape—Lina’s story is touching, heartbreaking, and moving, a stark exploration of mental illness, undiagnosed and unchecked. Readers will become immersed in Lina’s reflections and come to understand what it is like for an individual and a family facing Borderline Personality Disorder.
Comparable Titles: Hilary Smith’s Welcome to the Jungle, Bassey Ikpi’s I’m Telling the Truth but I’m Lying."
A Note From the Publisher
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
This is a biographical novel in the form of a memoir, not a traditional novel in which invented prose tells an invented story. The novel follows the words of a living sufferer of mental illness, the author’s daughter, whom he calls Lina, and her like-minded sister. Lina’s words describe what it feels like to suffer from acute childhood mental illness, borderline personality disorder, and its destructive impact on her family. All identities and some details are obscured.
Except for the last chapter and the reflections that follow from it, which in real life have only begun, the characters, events, thoughts, and dialogues are genuine. They are condensed from the writings of Lina, her family, and her friends, as preserved in their digital archives and online postings. Fourteen million words of time-stamped text that they wrote to one another are the primary source. This book would have been impossible a decade earlier because there was no instant messaging. It would be impossible today because instant messaging has moved to cellphones and messages are rarely saved.
The novel is written from the point of view of the sufferer of borderline personality disorder, Lina, in order to reveal directly, in her own words, her emotions: what she did, what she thought, what she said, what she heard, what she dreamed. If the book were written from the father’s point of view, it could only reveal what he did and thought, and what he thought she thought, which would be of limited value because he wasn’t present when Lina had her extreme experiences, and he naively thought nothing was wrong.
Except for the last chapter, Recovery Journey, and the mature reflections to which it leads, the author is amanuensis, copyeditor, and messenger; where the compilation is uneven, that is because the historical record is uneven: the author was unwilling to take liberties with the material to enhance the narrative. No attempt was made to turn Lina’s writing into literature, only to make it readable and inoffensive. The reader must remember that the father is not speaking through his daughter; she is speaking through him.
Everything that both siblings said about both parents was included. The author’s mentor, S.M, reviewed every draft and, among many contributions, helped to avoid bias in the selection that was required to keep the manuscript within a reasonable length. The reader may find the writing repetitive, inconsistent, and clumsy, with Lina blaming everyone and obsessing about minor issues but only touching upon important ones, but that is how her mind worked and what it is like living with someone with borderline personality disorder.
Raw journals could not be used in the book because Lina does not talk about events in the order in which they occurred, and the original journals are redundant, uncapitalized, verbose, unpunctuated, often obscene, and tedious to read for more than a few lines, like chatspeak. For example, “It would make my dad happy if I paid attention and did my homework, so I couldn’t do it no matter how much it might have made me happy,” comes from “i dont like him he ruins my weekend every time he speaks ever since i was pretty much in the womb, i've just automatically done stuff to piss him off which is why i'm failing and dont pay attention at school cuz i know it would make him happy if i did my work and paid attention and stuff so i dont do it and nomatter how much i'd like to do it for myself, i cant, cuz i know it would make him happy hah yea but overall i just cant be bothered anyways :P”. The author compiled, sequenced, merged, and cleaned related messages.
Emo Reality is like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where The Ghost of Christmas Past comes from private records, mainly instant messages; The Ghost of Christmas Present comes from public sources, mainly social media; and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the last chapter and Lina’s mature reflections, is fiction,. This ending is the author’s wish for Lina, because until she understands her past she cannot move forward. The author hopes that Emo Reality will encourage teenagers with borderline personality disorder to seek psychotherapy, so that the last chapter may become as real for them as the other chapters were for Lina. Teenage borderline personality disorder is not “just a phase.”
Advance Praise
Jerold Daniels has written a powerful novel that will have the reader stop and reflect on how severe mental issues are to an individual. It provides an up-close look at one person's struggles to overcome being taken over by her delusions. It's written with such intense emotion the reader feels the jagged scars the main character has suffered. This book is one that made a dramatic impact on this reader.
—Suzie Housley
Solutions to lifelong struggles are found with a diagnosis in this poignant book. Lina’s raw emotions are described in verbatim conversations, memories, and songs, showing a girl in crisis while her parents press her on schoolwork and a future she resists. Daniels next shows how, with the help of her partner and a therapist’s diagnosis of borderline personality in her twenties, Lina tracks false memories over time. The result is the ability to change her behavior. The setting then broadens from an exclusively internal landscape at the start, projected onto the internet, to include scenes of her physical, life-affirming relationships in her London apartment at the end. This happy, fulfilled conclusion satisfies readers after such a dire story.
—Mari Carlson
Featured Reviews
Tracy B, Reviewer
Wow. This book was a journey. This book is a fictional memoir based on the author's daughter. It follows the mind and mental health spiral of Lina as she grows from adolescent to young adult to adult. Growing up in a dysfunctional household with her often physically and mentally distant father, her mother who speaks terrible English, and her sister who just can't seem to stay on her side for long. Lina's personalities continuously multiply while her diagnosis keeps being misinformed.
As for the audiobook, the narrator was perfect because although her voice was kind of annoying it was perfect for that of an angsty teenager.
The book itself was a very difficult book to get through. Not because it was a bad book but because the topics were HEAVY and it did get hard to keep up with after a bit. It's full of teenage angst and parental issues. Believing everyone is against you is a hard way to live. It brings to the forefront mental health issues that aren't often talked about. This often misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis of patients which leads to extended mental episodes.
Although, I think this book SHOULD be read by most, I don't know if this book COULD be read by just anyone because I feel that it won't be appreciated by everyone. Regardless - kudos to Jerold Daniels for writing a lovely book on a difficult topic.
"...I haven't lived a life of failures. I've lived a life of challenges. I'm okay."
Yamini P, Reviewer
This book was very very difficult! As a reader, I felt this and I am not sure how difficult would it have been for the writer. It's a memoir of a person who dealing with a personality disorder, all the while having no clue about it.
Taking you through the life of a teenage girl and the choices she made. A journey of chaotic brain health, further leading to anger issues, self-harm and much more. Throughout the story, I felt too bad for the father who was just trying to help his family in the only way he knew how. While for others I just couldn't help but have mixed feelings.
So many of the symptoms discussed in the book have been witnessed forehand in people around us. But the lack of awareness about it makes us ignore it and label those actions as bad behaviour and rebellious attitude. If only, enough of them are identified and treated at the right moment in life, they could be saved from such misery.
The book has made me sad, but also aware of so many concepts. Consuming this one in #audiobook format, I had the experience of music, songs and all that yelling. It was heavy and difficult to go through a lot of parts of the book. If my fellow readers really want to try this - I would say go through the disclaimers once.
Thank you @netgalley for the Audiobook ARC
Genre: #memoir #biographies #health #mindandbody
Content disclaimers: #trauma #selfharm #halucinations #mentaldisorders and a few more things I don't feel comfortable writing
Melissa O, Reviewer
Emo reality, a really well done fictional memoir based on the authors daughter.
This novel broaches really tough subjects such as self harm, sexual abuse and Mental illness. It’s difficult to listen to the story of how Lina and her sister are struggling with depression through their teenage years however as a parent to a child who suffers with their mental health I found it really informative and helpful to know there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
The narrator voices Lina perfectly and held my attention throughout the book.
I would highly recommend this book.
Alicia C, Reviewer
This was a very difficult read for anyone. We are immersed into the perspective of Lina, a now young adult, who’s looking back on her life with new lens on understanding her personality disorder.
This book brought me to tears as Lina recounts episodes of hallucinations and misremembering.
This was more than a case study, it was a harrowing exploration of someone’s life living with mental illness.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC
Reviewer 1216198
This was a binge-worthy deep-dive into what it is like for a young lady and her family to deal with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). As a mental health therapist, I found the mental health representation to be very accurate and insightful. Readers might find that the narrative/plot gets a bit repetitive in the middle, but that is genuinely what it is like living with someone who has BPD. The author did a great job of crafting an interesting narrative based on a real family's lived experience, and ended with valuable information on how this lady got diagnosed and treated for BPD. The ending offers hope for those living with emotional instability. I know my review sounds very clinical, but I assure you, the story is very digestible and entertaining!!!
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