When Lina's idyllic childhood descends into mental chaos in her teenage years, Lina resorts to recording her thoughts in diaries, online chats and emails to make sense of her anguish. Through Lina's heart-wrenching words, the reader steps into her broken inner world to experience first-hand the obsessions, irrationality, angst and ruthlessness of teenage borderline personality disorder. Emo Reality shines a light into the dark corners of adolescent mental illness, proving that this disorder is not just a phase, and demonstrating its ravages not just upon an individual, but also upon a whole family.

The sisters have possessions, experiences, and opportunities, but despite intelligence, wealth, and education are rarely happy. Lina envies her sister, bullies, suffers nightmares, and hallucinates. In adolescence she becomes disaffected and disruptive in school, plunges from the top of her class to the bottom, and despite warnings, counseling, and tutoring, is expelled. Lina lies, steals, disrespects others, and self-harms. Her mother becomes unfaithful and the family falls apart. Lina graduates without university credit, then excels in a college examination arranged by her father, estranges him, and moves abroad to apprentice in a tattoo parlor. She marries for a visa, but her husband abuses her and she has panic attacks. She divorces him, repatriates, and begins psychotherapy. Lina explores her past with her therapist and discovers she has borderline personality disorder. She looks at life in a healthier way, and recovery begins.