The Book Intro I’m No Longer Using

Editing a book can be a daunting process (understatement of the year). As Steven King said, sometimes you have to "kill your darlings." What follows was the intro to my book for the past seven years, which I removed after my editor correctly pointed out that I didn't need it anymore. So sad, because it was my favorite... but now it can be YOUR favorite. Here you go:

RUN.

The word hits me like a slap. Sharp. Loud. Impossible to ignore.

RUN.

It doesn’t sound like my voice. It doesn’t sound like anyone’s. It’s just there, cutting through the fog in my head, louder than fear, louder than doubt, louder than the endless loop I’ve been stuck in for months.

I’ve been awake all night in this drab, windowless office, sitting at my desk, staring at my computer screen without seeing it. The same thoughts circle over and over, chewing on themselves.

I should leave.

I can’t leave.

I have to leave.

I can’t take this anymore.

This life—Scientology—is all I’ve known for nearly twenty years. It’s my work, my friends, my identity, my answers. If I leave, they’ll come after me. They always do. And they’ll convince me to come back. They’ll tell me I’m confused, that I’m wrong, that this is just a weakness I need to push through.

RUN.

I flinch.

“RUN, YOU IDIOT.”

Well. Okay then.

It’s just after eight in the morning. If I’m doing this—and apparently I am—there’s no time to think anymore. Thinking is how I got stuck here.

I hit print on the letter I started eight hours ago. It’s a breakup letter, a Dear John, except it’s really a Dear Ron, as in L. Ron Hubbard. I leave it face-up on my keyboard, grab my purse, and look around the office.

Is there anything else I can take? Anything that proves this life was real?

No. Unless I want to go back to berthing and grab the only civilian clothes I own, but that’s too dangerous. So I head out the back door toward my rental car.

Then I stop.

My body freezes even as my mind screams at it to move. The fear crashes in all at once, hot, paralyzing, suffocating. Scientology has enveloped my entire adult life. Who am I without it? What happens to me now? Am I making the biggest mistake of my life, or saving it?

David Miscavige’s voice echoes in my head, calm and cruel: You’ll end up broke. Alone. On the street. You’ll beg for food.

My stomach twists.

“I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU AGAIN—RUN.”

Thanks. Really.

I get into the blue Corolla and pull out of the lot as if my life depends on it—because it does. By 9:30, I’ll be marked missing from morning muster. After that, the clock starts. Recovery teams. “Concerned” friends. Pressure wrapped in kindness.

I keep checking the rearview mirror. Every car feels like them.

I know what happens if they catch me. I’ve seen it. I’ll be talked back into place, convinced that everything is my fault, interrogated for months, put to work until I break.

No. Not again.

As the road stretches out in front of me, something settles. It’s not peace or relief, but clarity. I’ve lost everything I knew in a single morning. My community. My certainty. My entire worldview.

But I finally understand something I couldn’t see before.

I didn’t come to Scientology for control or certainty. I came for freedom.

And somewhere along the way, I forgot what freedom even feels like.

The voice doesn’t speak again. It doesn’t need to.

For the first time in decades, I’m moving forward without permission, without a plan, without answers. Just instinct. Just momentum. Just the quiet, terrifying knowledge that staying would cost me more than leaving ever could.

I don’t know where I’m going. But I know I’m not turning back.