Can't give it up...

My first book was, I believe, my best because it concerned my alter ego, the girl I would like to have been. My school life from Kindergarten to high school was fraught with doubts about my worth. I wanted to be 'popular' but I didn't know how. I wanted boys to like me but I wasn't pretty enough. I wanted girls to like me but who would want to be my friend? Besides I didn't dress like a popular girl would and my hair was always at the mercy of my mother's 'artistic' whims.
Karin had always been popular. She had almond eyes, luscious lips, a small waist, a full chest, had long, silky brown hair and, to put a cherry on top, was well dressed. None of those attributes could have ever been used in describing me.
And if that wasn't enough, in high school I began to show signs of something strange. At first I couldn't put on makeup in the morning; as I applied my eyeliner my right hand would jerk across my face. Then once or twice a day my right knee would give out. My high school friends would laugh at me. Then my tongue got into the mix. I stopped contributing in class; I was afraid my words would become garbled. Then my whole body got into it. I flinched so many times other students decided I had bedbugs (wasn't that wonderful for my self-esteem?). Then at the beginning of my senior year I had a grand mal seizure in the mud during field hockey practice. Neither other students, nor my physical education teacher, nor me or my parents knew what I had. It took a brain wave test to tell the doctor what I had.
Oh gosh, I had epilepsy!
So as I wrote Home Where I Belong I determined that Karin wouldn't have any of those problems. She was a healthy 19-year-old whose only problem was trying to find the one man who would take her away on a white horse and make her life worth living.