

By the time I was 35, I had lived for 30 years in trauma. My PTSD has caused me to be hyperaroused over much of the ordinary things most people are confronted with daily. After those twenty years ended, I spent the next seven years with someone who sent me into flashbacks a number of times a day. For more than twenty years I was abused, tortured, and raped. I won't give details here or go into it, but "Broken" covers it all. This question is very difficult for me to answer. Readers get to witness the road to awareness while it happens through Broken, and it all is based on a true story. While writing Broken, I reached my awareness and through writing, I show it all. I show readers the hyperarousal, flashbacks, and disassociation of someone with PTSD. Through Elizabeth, I relive my own thirty years of trauma. Together, William and Elizabeth review the life of someone who is raised without love, family, comfort, therapy, or medication. Within that time, she reviews the first 30 years of her life filled with rape, torture, neglect, abuse, and loneliness. Shaw, the interviewer, and Elizabeth, a hermit who has shut the world away. I used the story to answer my questions, find my identity, and evaluate my choices.

With Broken, I take the reader into the mind of the mentally disturbed. Over the next two weeks, I wrote the 98,000 words that would become "Broken." I depict my childhood horrors that resulted in a number of severe psychological disorders. Through the chaos, I decided to stop and reflect on my past to find me. I was mentally spiraling out of control and had announced that I was moving to Ireland to live as a hermit. March 2015, I was asked "who am I?" Flashbacks had already started to surface. The persons involved, names, relationships, locations, and dates have all been altered, distorted, and/or changed to protect identities.
