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I'm not sure where to begin.

Where did it really start?  How much is relevant, and how much do you need to know in order to truly understand?  To simply tell you, straightforward and to the point, would never do.  After all, an event is far less significant than an emotion; a word, meaningless without the proper context.  Words, themselves, are nothing.  The meaning is all in our minds... I can only speak to you of dreams if you know what they are; I can only speak to you of love if you've felt it yourself.

Likewise, I could only speak to you with absolute honesty and clarity about my life if you had lived it right beside me -- walked in my footsteps, shared my experiences, felt my pain, stumbled through my dreams and suffered through my nightmares, loved those who I have loved, lost who I have lost, seen the beauty that I have seen, been hated and loved by those whose faces are forever engraved in my mind, and lived as I have.

You have not.

Do not, then, expect honesty, or the whole truth, or the details of what my life has really been.  For you, these would be no more real than any other story, and sometimes fiction is closer to the truth than our confused, dishonest, phony, tattered lives, in which we lie to ourselves almost as often as to others, in which we embrace certain memories and repress the rest, and invent meaning to surround every aspect of our world instead of shaping that world to fit the true, untainted, unfabricated meaning of life.  Sometimes, it's better to lie to get a point across.  In the same way, our fantasies and lies help us to understand the truth, if we can separate them... they can become the truth, if we choose not to.  Perception matters more than fact... it is based on the truth and extends it, clarifies it, gives it meaning... the truth matters far less than what the truth means.  So why not shape the world to fit the meaning?  Such is the role of any good work of fiction.

Does that make it any less real?