Saturday Read: Your Voice in My Head And an Interview With Author Emma Forrest

Emma Forrest’s “Your Voice in My Head” was just released on Tuesday. This book is a memoir and, as Emma perfectly put it, a duet. Emma has struggled with mental illness since her teens, but isn’t diagnosed until she winds up on Dr. R’s doorstep after a failed suicide attempt. She credits Dr. R with her recovery, but when he suddenly passes away from cancer, she realizes how little she knows about this man who saved her life.

By Alex K.

Emma sets out to write a biography of Dr. R, but along the way she weaves in her story and discovers herself. She takes the reader through her life as a teenage journalist in Britain, her struggle with mental illness and recovery through Dr. R in New York and, of course, relationships along the way, including falling in love with one of the world’s biggest movie stars (who she calls her Gypsy Husband). All make for not only an interesting and engaging read, but one that really pulls at the heartstrings.

There aren’t enough positive words in the English language to describe this book. Staggering, beautiful, a true work of art. Every time I picked Your Voice in My Head up, I felt like I was catching up with up with an old friend. When she told about funny things, I laughed. And I cried when I shared in her sorrows. The candidness with which Emma wrote the memoir really makes it so wonderful and easy to get attached to. It’s not often that I’m genuinely sad when I finish a book, but I was when I had to put Your Voice in My Head on my bookshelf.

Everyone should read this book. I think college-age girls (or people of any age, really) will gain tremendous insight and perspective into the important things in life. Emma is wise beyond her years and so strong, and I think we can all learn some from this exemplary woman!

I was lucky enough to interview the lovely Brit about the book and her interesting life. Check it out!

Alex: I found your book to be spectacular. Almost every time I picked it up, I teared up a bit and a few times, openly weeped. I honestly felt like I was hanging out with my best friend and she was telling me about her life. As creepy as it may sound, I feel like we’re old friends now! How has the response been to it?

Emma: Oh thank you! Well you know, it varies culturally. The English response was really divided generationally. I think journalists who are old enough to remember me from my other life when I was a teenage journalist were pretty harsh on it, while younger people in England who are just discovering me have loved it. So that’s a good response! And we’ll see when it comes out here in America on May 3^rd.  Actually, the first reviews have been really good, so I think it’s sort of classic that the toughest reviews have been England because it’s English to not like whining and people who complain. There’s a sense of  “you should keep that stuff to yourself.”

A: So you started out as a bit of a teen prodigy in the journalism world. Can you tell me what that was like?

E: So, I was earning my wages from 15 and I was celebrated for being young, but that’s dangerous because you always know in the back of your mind that one day you’re not going to be a teenager and will they still want to publish me? Very consciously, at 17, after three years of being the “teen prodigy” I went to work at another newspaper where they paid me much less, but at least my work didn’t say my age. I knew that, as with Hollywood, once I aged they would have thrown me away and found someone even younger, so it was good to force myself to transition to the adult role earlier.

A: You talk about struggling with mental illness from a very young age. When did you first realize that what you were feeling may not be normal?

E: To be honest, only when I was diagnosed in New York. You just don’t know what’s inside other people’s heads. Especially when you’re 12 or 13, you don’t say to other kids, “Hey, do you do this? Do you think this?” So really, it was a long time.

A: You credit much of your recovery to Dr. R. What was so special about him and your relationship with him?

E: I think that he never thought things were as bad as I thought they were. He always thought that I was going to be fine. And that sounds simplistic but that’s really it. I liked him and I liked the way that he saw me. I had come to think that I was such a terrible person and to see myself as he saw me, such a great person, was a hell of a start.

A: Let’s move on to your ‘Gypsy Husband.’ You were a bit of a celebrity in your own right in the UK, but what was it like to being with someone so high-profile in the states?

E: It was challenging. The best place in the world to be was in his house, which was huge, so you could just sort of seclude yourself there and be completely normal and relate to each other in a very healthy way. But then, if we even went to the drugstore for a toothbrush, everything changed. So that, I think, would be a challenge for anybody, let alone someone who has this sort of fragile history. I think it was a challenge for him as well because he had a fragile history.

A: After reading the book, I wasn’t a fan of GH. I don’t think you portrayed him as particularly “evil,” but I felt so connected to this book that it was like my best girlfriend was telling me about her life and I wanted to defend her.  Did you let him read it before it went to press?

E: Yes, I asked him to. He went back and forth about whether or not he wanted to. We certainly sent him a copy and I don’t know if he did. I imagine it would have been hard for him, primarily to see how much pain I was in. He did love me and does care, but I certainly didn’t mean to portray him as the bad guy because I know the truth. I wasn’t trying to portray that this person did terrible things. So, no, I really, really didn’t mean to have any type of villain portrayal. And I don’t think that’s the way life is; people are complicated and there are bad people who do really good things and good people can do really bad things. It’s not good guys and bad guys.

A: Do you think that if you stayed with GH you would have ended up in a good place?

E: I think if I had learned to be stronger, maybe. I don’t think I was helping myself or helping him with how spooked I was by aspects of it. I don’t think we would have stayed together forever; it’s pretty rare that people stay together forever, especially with that many challenges. I will say that it was a very, very healthy relationship for both of us and an unhealthy breakup. People are relating to the book because everyone has been through a terrible breakup where they couldn’t let go, but very few people have been through that and seen it chronicled in the National Enquirer.

A: I interpreted the voice in your head to be Dr. R’s. Whose voice is in your head now?

E: Mine, but funny enough, I just had an incredibly stressful 48 hours to deal with a really, really big work decision that was hard and meant losing someone I love deeply from my life. I navigated it as best I could and my mom told me that she thinks Dr. R would have been really proud and I’m doing what he would have told me to do. Hopefully, at this point, it’s sub-conscious that he has some influence. Because of him and because of getting well, I definitely have a sense of perspective. When you’re in the depths of it, you think, “Oh I have the worst problems in the history of the world!” Now that’s just all bullsh*t. It’s hard and it’s not a great time in your own life, but on a scale of world pain, what I’ve been through is pretty minimal.

A: Because this is for CollegeCandy, do you have any advice you could give to college-age girls? Girls in their early to mid-twenties, just kind of finding themselves?

E: Stay alive, stay eyes on the prize because in my experience, and in the experience of a lot of my girlfriends, 25 onwards, life just gets better every year. I think early twenties are really, really hard – like harder than being a teenager, harder than your thirties. You know there’s Saturn Return (the first real life change) from 27-30 and it’s good times! It gets better and better and you like yourself more and know yourself more and you become more attractive to other people. So just get to 25 and it gets easier!