I Was a Unicorn: An Abridged Memoir of Belief, Loss, and Letting Go

In 2014, Simon Skiles began keeping a journal. In it, he wrote - in complete earnest - that he was a unicorn.For seven years he chronicled an extraordinary inner life: crossing veils into another world, speaking with gods and dragons, mourning a lost mate across the boundary of death, believing himself an ancient being sent to Earth on a mission. He published all seven journals as they happened. Then he took them down.I Was a Unicorn is the abridged, unflinching retrospective of those years - one distilled chapter per year - written from the far side of them by the man he became.Beneath the cosmology is a story anyone can recognize. A boy whose father vanished and whose mother kept setting him aside decided, somewhere in there, that he had no value - and grew into a man who built an entire universe in which he mattered, and could never be left. That structure carried him through divorce, homelessness, estrangement, and the loss no framework should ever have to hold: the death of his daughter. And slowly, across seven years, it taught him enough to climb down and walk on his own.This is not a fantasy, and not a confession. It's an honest map of the elaborate worlds we build to survive being alive - and what it takes to finally set one down.A candid, strange, and deeply human memoir of belief, grief, and letting go.This book discusses suicide, including the loss of the author's daughter. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available - in the U.S., call or text 988.