I’ve written my autobiography. Sort of. It started out as an autobiography but evolved. My perception of what I was writing altered as I progressed, mostly due to an initial lack of understanding on my part as to what an autobiography is. What I’ve written is more of a memoir.

An autobiography is a factual account of one’s life. It’s not terribly subjective, and autobiographies usually follow the sequential line laid down by time, reporting on bits and pieces of a person’s life from childhood to the present to shed light on an individual’s life and accomplishments.

Daily writing prompt

You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

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A memoir is also a piece of nonfiction self-reflection, but it jumps around a bit timewise – it’s less bound by the linear – and it can be more subjective. I’ve noticed in my own effort a tendency to wallow and navel-gaze: I’m working on that in the edits. It’s hard to avoid a good humble-brag, especially when you’re describing things dire.

A memoir will also often have an end goal beyond simple exposition. The author has a lesson they wish to share.

Memoirs are often thematic. Mine is about my eating disorder, though since an eating disorder is a many-tentacled thing, it covers a lot of real estate under that umbrella. I wrote about the preconditions, and the triggering events, and the realities of living with an eating disorder, and the challenges associated with surviving one. It’s pretty big. I’m working on that in the edits too.

Openings are important. Humans need our attention grabbed quickly, or we move on. Perhaps that’s the reason behind the larger first letter of the opening sentences in chapter books.

I don’t remember when I wrote the opening lines for my memoir. Were they in the first draft? They weren’t the story I started with – that one relates to cinnamon buns. Did I cut them in from a different location as I worked my way through the writing thereof? Who can recall? But the following quote is what I have as an introduction so far. I’m okay with it. Mostly.

In the early days of my escalation from severely restricted eating into full-blown bulimia, I thought I’d discovered a secret that would allow me to eat, but still achieve that desperately desired emaciated frame. I thought I was so clever. I thought I could eat my cake and have skeletal too.

You can’t.

That you’ve discovered a secret and are special because of it is the first lie the eating disorder sells you, and it’s the hardest one to let go of. But an eating disorder doesn’t make you special, or unique.

What it makes you is ill.

from “First it steals your life, then it tries to kill you.”