What is lust? Something about destruction. Something about fear. Something about something that hurts deeper than you have words for. Something about something that hurt you before you even had words. You want a lover who knows that the work of living is struggling to thrive with a blade lodged in your side. Because if you show up on his stoop in a trench coat and begin to seductively untie it, he's not going to marvel. He's going to ask about that cleaver to your gut. "This is my mother," you'll explain. You'll point to the mangled stump of your thigh and say, "My dad. He just vanished." Then he'll see the bubbling tar pouring out of your womb, blistering your thighs, enveloping him with steam. You'll lick his earlobe, whispering, "This is my rage."

Anne Champion was raised in a home riddled with violence. She bonded with other troubled children of parents who masked dark secrets, causing her to recreate the emotional patterns of her childhood until she felt her only escape was suicide. But a miraculous experience involving a ghost from her past-her first love who committed suicide as a teenager-sets her on a path to re-examine her life and uncover the secrets lurking within people she loved most. As she does, she meets a sociopath who takes her to the origin story: a predatory stalker.

In this memoir, Champion recreates the 1990s world of her youth: of hip hop and grunge culture, of the AIDS epidemic and LGBTQ rights, of slut shaming and sexual liberation, of children with mental health problems and a new Prozac nation, and of griefs that carve through our generational traumas like a river threatening flood. As Champion dedicates herself to psychological healing from her past, she stumbles upon a new self awareness of her lifelong mental struggle she couldn't name before: Borderline Personality Disorder.

What curses befall abused children? What wreckage can be unearthed in a childhood of drowning? What lessons can be drawn from a descent into the underworld?