When I moved back to French Park (Santa Ana, CA) in 2018, I moved into the largest one-bedroom apartment I had ever rented. And although I was making more money than I ever had before working as a cook, I was still relatively unhappy; all that money just went to more drinking and more cigarettes but the writing prevailed over all of it.
I knew that I had hit a nerve inside my ego. No amount of money could save me, only writing still made sense. And I realized that the self was something more original and therefore, more priceless than anything else.
But my self was always made to feel like an ugly and useless thing by several people that I at one point opened up to. And I would see the same thing happen to others; just being honest or your true self was a crime deemed anti-society, and you got just that: isolation by way of being ignored until you started to believe that there actually was something wrong with you.
This book is for all the outcasts who can’t help being brave enough to be themselves.
–Eric