Things have been rather hectic lately. I've been working a new full-time job, planning my wedding and doing a lot of volunteer work as well. James and I moved into a new house this January and we are settling in nicely. He has been working very hard both at work and at home. Renovating seems like an endless headache. James' sister and neice are currently staying with us as they hunt for an apartment, so it's been a very full house the past couple of weeks. It's nice to have some company while James is at work. As far as my "troubles" go, I have been doing very well lately and I am very proud of myself. James has been a huge help, of course and I have found a friend in his sister. James often finds us in the kitchen in the middle of the night chatting and eating ice cream straight from the carton. I am truly happy and I hope the same for all of you. Pictures: [Above] James and his lovely neice. They have become rather inseparable. [Below] James and I at Christmas. You can see in that last picture that I have gained a lot of weight back. Most people I see from my past don't even recognize me. The doctor says I am the healthiest he has ever seen me. I believe this is a reflection of how elated I am, all the time. Life truly is precious, every moment of it. Love, Alice

I have never been the type to get attached to people I know only over the internet, but here I am. I've been missing you all so much, I'm glad to be back. I've been wonderful lately, really and truly happy. I hope the same for all my dear journal friends. Here is a photo of James and I by the water. He makes me so very happy, every single day. That's him, that's my angel. Isn't he beautiful? I hope to be catching up with you all very soon. Love Always, Alice

Of course I'm not done. I'm going through some things right now and I am so sorry I haven't been around. Know that I love you all, and am still a faithful reader, even though I haven't been writing. Some of you, are in my thoughts daily. Love always, Alice.

James and I woke up early this morning and went down to the water to watch the sunrise. He held me and we sat for the longest time just staring out into the sky, I can’t remember ever feeling that safe, the way I feel when I am in his arms. I realized how badly I want to feel that forever more. We may not have much money, belongings or family but we have our love and that’s all I need for the rest of my life. On that note we decided to get in the car and go. We drove for hours until we reached the house. James came to the passenger side of the car and woke me by kissing my forehead through the open window. I knew I’d have the strength to face them. So I opened the car door and stepped out. Already I felt that house and all the pain it holds for me. Dad came to the door when he heard us pull up and stood completely still for more time than was comfortable. I knew what he was thinking; how happy and healthy I look, how James was able to get me clean when he couldn’t, how good it really had been for me to get away from him and the stepmother…how he had failed me. And it’s true, he did fail me. In every sense of the word my father failed me, but I forgive him, so I jogged up the sidewalk and gathered him into my arms. I felt him tense up at first and then melt into the unfamiliar shape of my body, this was how we should be and he felt that. Before I knew it we were inside drinking tea at the kitchen table, the stepmother busied herself at the sink so as not to have to look at me while I regaled them both with the stories of how James proposed and the day at the beach when he presented me with my ring. She didn’t want to see how happy I was, how much more happy I am than she will ever be. It felt good to step out of that house once again and I sensed my mind trying to fall back into that time, when all the walls held was fear, but I kept it back. With memories of the morning spent watching the sunrise and the feeling of James’ fingers intertwined with mine. I’ll be okay, really.

Is that it? Of course that isn’t it, expect more from me, always. A good memory is sometimes a blessing, and at other times a curse. There are some memories that I wish I could just erase, wipe clean from my mind. Some are filled with regret and sorrow now; others were just so beautifully blissful that they are painful to remember. I will never forget my first day as a working girl; I had been hooking on the streets for about a year prior, however, this was my first day working in a whore-house. Glamorous, I know. I can recall the sick feeling in my stomach as ‘Sid’ applied the overdone makeup that would be my costume for the next few months. The all too familiar feeling of a man I didn’t love, or even know thrusting his hips as I lay below him, waiting for it to be over. The way the back of my head felt, pressed into the musty pillows. I was eighteen and barely legal, really just a child; and this was no place for a child at all. When I was asked in my day to day life, I was a freelance writer for magazines, a student at the nearby university, a secretary at some no-name business. I was living a lie, careful to cover my tracks, sneaking around behind their backs. A hand job at your home, while your wife works in the other room. My tongue between your legs, even though I’m not attracted to girls. This is what I’ve become. A quickie after your children fall asleep. Lost in their dreams. While I’m lost in this nightmare, not three feet away. I had given up on all the morals I once had, the child seats in cars and strollers in garages, blurred by how badly I wanted that next fix. I prayed to God for forgiveness, but even as I mumbled the words I doubted, that God would forgive me for committing such acts. But if it wasn’t me it would be Susan down the street, and she had a real life to ruin; two kids, a husband. Better it me than her, ruin me instead.

I drifted in and out of consciousness on the bathroom floor. My mind clouded with the evening’s events and the heroine induced dreams. Looking back I find it nauseating that I never worried. I could have drown in my own vomit, been found in a ditch the next morning and I was too drunk, too drug sick to care. Strangers, unfamiliar faces. I felt myself being lifted, carried into a room, set down on the bed. He was on top of me the next time I opened my eyes. Inside I was panicking, I saw the stepbrothers face instead of the stranger’s. I was five years old again. James. I felt the body of the stranger pulled off of me. Stepbrother’s face was pushed aside by James’ in my mind. He carried me out of the house and to his car, laying me gently in the back seat. I slept all the way to his house. The next morning I woke up to his face, lying next to me in bed. The tears flowed freely, guilt searing my cheeks with every drop. All I could do with apologize. I had so much to be sorry for. And all he had to give was love. But that’s James. Through everything, my lies, deception and stupidity, in the throes of my addictions and illness he was there. Rescuing me from dangerous situations, somehow knowing where I was and that I needed him. Forgiving me for everything, I owe him every smile I make these days, everyday I am clean and happy. I owe him my life. But for this particular smile, I blame you. For reading, and commenting. I get better and happier with the person I am with each kind word I read. It’s taken such a long time to have the courage to get this all out. But it needs to be told. So I continue to write, to live and to smile.

A quick recap of my life in the past few weeks would go somewhere along the lines of.. I've spent the last few days in the hospital. I was having very withdrawal-like symptoms even though I've been clean for over six months and losing weight really rapidly, although I was eating like an elephant. We are still unsure as to what caused this, however I am on the mend as we speak and going back to work on Monday. In larger news.. I have found that I do some of my best thinking and writing in the hospital, ironic I know. I have found that being confined to a bed causes me to explore my own soul in a way that I am unable to do while mobile. After some good rest and soul searching I wrote James a letter. It went for seven pages and told of all the things I had held inside for the duration of our relationship. I told him the details of abuse I had held back when I spilled the secret at fifteen. I admitted everytime I slept with men to make a buck, when I promised I was being faithful. I told him how hooking, like herione and my various other drugs of choice, had become an addiction, and that I was done with all of it. On Thursday he came to visit and wheeled me out into the park next to the hospital. He sat on the bench next to me and read the letter. I watched with a heavy heart as tears fell and hit the pages of my letter, my lies. It made me sick to my stomach to watch, but at the same time it was a beautiful sight. I waited as he neared the end of my appologies, terrified of his reaction. Instead of telling me how dissapointed he was, or that these lies that I had held inside for so many years were going to be the end of what we had, he turned to me and asked me to marry him...

I am so sorry. I've been such an awful internet friend when so many of you have shown me such kindness. The least I could have done is write, and I know that. But you have to understand just how ill I am right now. There are so many things going on in my life that are so hard for me to understand, I'm just glad I have my best friend and love of my life here to guide me through this. He has really been my rock these past few weeks. For the first time, I've had enough of talking about myself. So know, that I want to hear all about your lives. What are you doing, are you doing okay? Please don't have forgotten me already, I was here all along.

Standing on the edge of morning, scent of sex and New Found Glory playing as she's pulling back her hair. She drives away, she's feeling worthless; used again, but nothing's different. She'd stay the night but knows he doesn't care. At home by three; a deafening quiet. The porch light's off, guess they forgot it. She'd cry herself to sleep but she don't dare. And she wants to be a model, She wants to hear she's beautiful. She's beautiful. I want to save you.. Dressed by dawn and out the door, no light, she memorized the floors so she could leave without being detected. She works till three; it's uniform, she dreams that he'll come by the store. She prays for days when boys mean she's protected. And she wants someone to see her, She needs to hear she's beautiful. She's beautiful. --- I slipped out from underneath the rough motel room blanket and dressed quickly. The man in the business suit was still asleep. His tie, still attached to his bare neck was folded over in such a way that I was reminded of the paper accordions my class had made in second grade. I knew I had to push those memories out of my mind, I was leading a double life and I couldn’t let the two become intertwined. There were the pleasant lunches with my Dad, he would invite me to a restaurant and wear that worried look as he told me I was two thin. I suspected he was leading a double life as well. On the other side of things there were the nights. Scoring hits here and there with any money I had made the night before. Never being careful to put enough money aside for the month’s rent. Andrea and I would get dolled up; she’d ask to do my makeup-hair-clothes. She always put on far too much lipstick and hot pink blush but all was made worth while when she’d caress my face or tell me I was beautiful. I needed to hear I was beautiful back then. After trying to stitch together the runs in our pantyhose we’d lock the apartment doors and hit the streets. I was always picked up first and I felt ashamed each time I would pass her, shifting in the passenger seat of another stranger’s car, praying to survive the night. The funny thing is that as much as I hated myself, hated my body, hated the random men I slept with to make a buck; I had these rules. Unlike most hookers I had boundaries that I set. I wouldn’t get into a car that had any sign of a family. A car seat in the back was an automatic pass. No kissing, the only people who ever kissed me in my life were my mother, my father and James. You aren’t my friend, I don’t care about you, you mean nothing to me you won’t kiss me. As much of a junky as I was; I wouldn’t ruin a family, or give away my lips for my next fix. No one knew who I was. During the lunches with my Dad he would look into my eyes, I knew he was looking past the dark circles in the lower creases, he saw that I had a secret and I was too tired to care. I was screaming inside and I longed to scream at him. I wanted to tell him how tired, how sore, how sick I was becoming. I wanted him to protect me from these strangers, I figured it was time to step up to plate and fight for me, unlike he had fought for me when I lived under his roof with the stepbrother, but I was just too tired. I hated him. I hated my mother. I hated James. They had turned their backs, walked away. Unable to stand me and everything I was. Now, looking back I don’t blame them. But then… I was a seventeen year old hooker, hidden behind makeup, fishnets and high black boots. Your mother’s crossed the street, pushing you in your stroller. They didn’t want you to see me, to grow up and be just like me. I was a seventeen year old hooker, and no one knew my name.

I really need to apologize for my absence in the past few days. I know I’ve probably missed out on a lot and I’m sorry I haven’t responded to many of the comments coming my way. I’ve been having a really hard time lately, I’ve been in and out of rehab, I haven’t had any relapses, I’m just finding it hard to cope with a lot of ‘outside pressures’ as my therapist calls them. Mentally I feel stronger than ever and I know that I am staying clean for good; my life is going to well right now to mess this up. I promise to try to get back to you all in the next few days, know that you are all in my thoughts even when I’m not writing and that you help me through each obstacle, in each day. Knowing that you are hearing me, reading it, taking it all in. It has helped me more in the last little while than anything else has, in my life. So thank you, just for your reading and the wonderful comments you leave me. You do more for me than you will ever know. --- Getting into James’ car after such a huge changing point in my life felt so good, I can still feel the vinyl seat hugging my legs, the feel of the wheels starting to turn; taking me away from all the suffering. I was free. He asked where I wanted to go and I told him anywhere. It was the truest of statements I ever made, as anywhere was really where I wanted to be, I could go anywhere he wanted to take me, I was free. We stopped near the lake where I had told him everything and I ran out of the car, peeling my clothes off as I went. I came to the waters edge and tore into the lake like never before. I can remember how my chest shook with happiness as he undressed down to his boxers and came running into the water after me. The feeling of his arms around me, the water that encircled every inch of my body were feeling that felt all new to me. I was speechless, for the first time in my life words failed me. There was only that touch, the touch that told him how thankful I was and with my arms wrapped around his neck, my wet hair trailing down his back, he knew that he had changed my life forever. I moved out of his family’s house two years later, it had been the happiest two years of my life. We were best friends and I adored his family, they were unlike anything I had every encountered; polite, kind and good to their kids. They were everything my family never was, never would be. As much as I enjoyed my time there I was so happy when I ran into my Dad in the grocery store and he told me that he had left her, “for good”, he said. He said that I could come live with him in his apartment if I wanted. That, “it wasn’t much but it was home.” James’ family was wonderful to me, they gave me everything I never had but they were a family, I wasn’t part of the special group they were and that had stung like an open wound since I moved in. So I went. Nearly three months later Dad decided to move back in with The Stepmother. After living so happily with Dad in our cozy one bedroom apartment where we slept on two single beds and change awkwardly in the bathroom, this came as quite a blow. Dad tried to convince me to come as well, I can hear him now saying, “She’s really pulled it together and he’s gone now sweetie, he’s in a correctional facility. He’s being cured.” He spoke like he had suddenly acquired a PhD and I hated him for it. At the time I couldn’t think of the things Stepbrother did to me as the effects of some invisible disease, today I now it wasn’t a disease, more like an epidemic. An epidemic of abuse is what I see it as now. Now that I know that his grandfather did it to his aunt, his aunt did it to his father, and his father did it to him. In turn he did what he knew and abused me. I have come to believe that inside all people are good and I have forgiven him, as much as I hated him then I have come a long way and I know that deep down he was just a scared little boy who never knew any other way. With every smiling child I pass, every wild flower I pick on my way to work to take to him, to let him know that I'm alright, I forgive him a little more. If only I could have back then, when his abuse caused more and more suffering for me and the one’s around me as I grew. If only then I knew there were other things I could turn to, places I could go. If only, during all those years of hated him, hating myself. I could have forgiven him. I would have changed everything. But here, at the end of that shaky road; it stops. And the epidemic stops here. It stops with me.

I believe that the admittance of abuse was harder than all the years that I went through it. In grade ten I got my first real boyfriend, he is the person I have to thank for getting me out of the awful situation I was in. He is also the person I have to thank for getting me out of all sorts of other things later on in my life. To this day he is my best friend; I owe my life to him. I remember the day like it was yesterday. Lying on the blanket in the grass, my hair was wet from swimming and it was dripping over my face, I probably looked so disgusting but I had never felt more beautiful. I was looking around at the trees and the sky, wondering how he found a spot so completely secluded from the rest of the park. I turned to see him looking lovingly into my eyes. I knew this was it, as much as I wanted this to be it I was so afraid. I could still feel the dull pain of the little girl inside of me, still holding onto that fear that no one would love her because she was already broken. He told me he loved me as we undressed and I believed it with my whole being, I was letting myself be undressed, I was not fighting or crying or feeling sinful. This felt right, safe. Afterwards he held me and told me I had been wonderful. I could feel him wondering why I had cried, why I was still crying and I knew it was only fair that I tell him. We spent the night laying there, the world shut out. He let me cry and tell him everything, from beginning to end. As I spoke he was silent, he knew I needed silence and when I was done he kissed my nose, wiped my cheek with his sleeve and told me that he was sorry, that he hurt so much for me and that it would be over soon. When he hugged me then, engulfing me in his musky scent I felt safe for the first time, protected. But in that same moment I was realizing just how pathetic it was that I, at sixteen was still being sexually abused, after eleven years, I was still a victim. There hasn’t been a day that has gone by since, that I don’t think of the day he told my father. He made it seem like it was the most serious thing in the world, he understood how serious it was to me. I can remember him walking into the living room behind my dad, I watched from my bedroom door. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I saw in my father’s face the moment he knew, he felt that he had failed me, and he had. I continued with our plan and packed my bags. I turned to see my dad, standing in my door, behind him James still sat on the couch. Dad had tears rolling down his cheeks, forming large shapes in his shirt, over his heart. He didn’t make any motions as if to hug or comfort me. He just stood there and looked at my bag and at me and he nodded. He changed my world with just a neck movement; it said that he understood why, why I needed to get out. He looked like a wounded dog, so much so that I couldn’t help but walk over to him and hug him. There were no words to be said, so I squeezed my arms around him as hard as my skinny arms would let me. I opened the door with my bag in my hand, and I left without looking back. It was over, I had survived. Alice.

The worst part about the way I was a victim was that I didn’t even know I was. The stepbrother made me believe that his touching me, the way he made me touch him was normal, in my mind it was how it was for everyone. This was just the way it was. The stepbrother never threatened me like most do, he tried to made me feel like I was part of his little game by telling me that this was “a big kid secret between the two of us”. I believed him for a few years until he started to hit me and spit on me when I wouldn’t cooperate. He would tell me that I was “a worhtless little slut” and that I deserved what he was doing to me. Over the years I began to believe him, I started to think that I truly was worhtless and that no one would ever love me. I learned after a few years that this was a secret, but it wasn't mine. Atleast it shouldn't have been. “Who could love used goods”, he asked me one night while he forced his "private area" into my mouth. “Why would anyone want you now, when I’ve already broken you.” I pictured myself being tossed into “the broken toy bin” in my kindergarten room. Thrown in among headless dolls and trucks missing wheels. I imagined being thrown in head first, my skirt sliding down towards my head, all the students and teachers seeing the blood stains in my panties, splattered across the teddy bear print. They would all know my secret, my classmates wouldn’t know whether to feel sorry or shameful for me. I knew that no one wanted a dirty broken girl, and that no one ever would. The joint actions of stepbrother and stepmother caused me to believe that my body was worthless. The purple and blue, marks of her abuse, placed perfectly to be hidden under clothes for school. And the secret wounds, in private places on my body and imprinted in my mind and soul, made by him and the way he was with me. I hated them both so much, but in a way I wanted to please them. I thought that if I dealt with what they did that that would have to love me. If I lasted through the years of hurt and confusion, in the end they would love me. I used to feel to dirty when he was done, not just physically but mentally as well. It confused me how something that I knew was so wrong could sometimes feel good. These feelings made me hate myself, as early as the age of six I hated everything about myself. I hated the way I looked, the way I felt and who I was. I took all my dolls and stuffed animals down off the shelves, I didn’t want them to see him doing these things to me, but mostly I didn’t want them to see that at times I enjoyed it. Alice.

Quickly and quietly the next morning I slid my book inside the front of my jeans and opened the second story window and swung out onto a tree beside it, the twigs pulled at my clothes and scratched at last night’s bruises but I struggled down to the ground. I stopped only to grab an apple from one of it’s many branches before running out of the yard, running as fast as my legs would carry me. I felt his hands on me the moment I thought I was free. Stepbrothers clammy hands were clamped around my waste so tight I couldn’t breathe. Before I knew it I was on the ground, he was hovering over top of me asking me what I was doing running away from the house like that. He reached for my shirt and I knew this was it, I was his sister’s replacement, I was next. Quickly I thought back to stepsister, the way she would cry in the next room when he would come in the night, that horrible, hopeless cry. This wasn’t happening to me. The stepbrother had pulled the book out from my jeans and undone the first button. What was he doing? Why was he trying to touch my “special area” my dad told me that no one but the doctor should touch that area. With one hand over my mouth, his other sliding slowly down into my jeans the stepbrother told me that “this was my punishment for trying to run away.” I was spared for that moment by the stepmother, stepbrother’s head had spun around just as his hand had reached the top of my panties. Stepmother was calling us in for breakfast. He jumped off of me after telling me that this was “our little secret” little did I know, nothing about this was “ours”. No part of it was mine at all. I lay there after he had run through the field in the direction of the house and out of sight. I was so confused about what had happened and I couldn’t get the picture of his face out of my mind as I gathered my book and did up my pants. He had this terrible grin on his face that wouldn’t leave my mind. I held The Hardy Brothers close to my chest as I made my way up to the house as if two fictional boys would ward of any horrible stepbrothers. No such luck. I woke up in the middle of the night. He was shutting my door behind him. If I pretend to be sleeping he will just go away. He walked towards my bed sat down beside me. Just lay still and keep your eyes close, he’ll leave, he will leave. He pulled back the covers. Exposing my skinny, bare legs and my flat figure hidden by my nighty. At this point he shook me to wake me up, without thinking I opened my eyes and told me to be still and quiet. I did as he said, too afraid to do anything but what he said. Confused, I watched him, with that awful grin on his face. Again he told me to keep still and quiet and he climbed on top of me and spread my legs. As he slid his hand up underneath my nighty and into my panties I knew something was wrong but I kept quiet. He started to touch me in a place I had never been touched, it was new but not bad. It didn’t feel like much of anything until it started to hurt. I felt his fingers being pushed into me. I squirmed on the bed and tried to stop him but he kept going. By the time he had slid his own pants off I was somewhere else. In my mind I had escaped the pain and confusion. I was riding a unicorn in a beautiful field on a spring day. I couldn’t feel the pain of the first thrust. I was still five years old, just a little girl riding her unicorn. I couldn’t feel his cold clammy hands exploring my innocent flesh. In the morning he was gone. I had drifted off to sleep as he had his way with me. I woke up confused and in terrible pain. I tried to be somewhere else, I tried to find my unicorn, my field of daisies but no matter how hard I tried I was right there, a five year old girl with stained sheets, a terrible secret and lost innocence. Alice.

I will never forget the day stepsister moved to her dad’s. It was a regular day in the sense that stepmother was in her usual awful mood and decided to take it out on me. At the age of five I was unsure about most things, but I was certain that stepmother and I would never have the relationship I had imagined. See that is the saddest part about this whole story, I had almost pushed my dad to marry her so we could be a family. I had this picture in my mind, that she would come into my life, replace the hurt that was left by my birth mother and we would be all the things I had always imagined a mother and daughter should be. She would take stepsister and I out shopping and to a movie afterward. She would buy me my first bra. She would smile at me, with that warmth I’d remembered from the day at the park with my own mother. Laying in the shattered bits of glass from the water goblet she had thrown at me, blaming me for her daughters decision to leave, I realized that we would never be anything close to what I had pictured. Stepsister had been gone mere minutes when stepmother had thrown me in my room after another one of her relentless beatings. I layed on my bed and cried, sliding up my shirt I looked at her fist marks all over my tiny abdomen. Upon closer inspection the imprint of her wedding band could be seen to the left side of my small bellybutton. I hated that bruise almost as much as I hated her. I felt my emotions brewing inside of my small body screaming to be let loose, with my face crunched up in a look of complete disgust I fell asleep. My innocent face rested gently on the tear stained pillow. Sun shone through the cracked window of my tiny bedroom, illuminating the effects of her hatred, welts all over my body which would soon be scars, enternal memories of her and the way my childhood was ripped away in one swift motion. I awoke hours later to hear my parents fighting, stepmother was screaming at my dad about me, how I was a terrible child and that she wouldn’t put up with me. I let the tears fall freely as I stood to change into my nightie. She told my dad that she couldn’t look at me. I pulled my nightie over my head and stood still, wondering why this was. She supplied the answer unknowingly with her next sentence: “she looks exactly like the crack-whore mother!” These words haunt me to this day. As I pushed my arms out the arm holes of my nighty, I sat down on my bed and touched my face, sure to be gentle as she had left a nice purple bruise on my cheek. Was this why she hated me so much? My face? I wondered if we would have had the relationship I imagined if I had had a different face. As I layed down and pulled the warm covers over me I remembered that my mom had small eyes, it almost looked like she was squinting all the time. As I drifted to sleep again, a new patch of tears began to slide onto my damp pillow and I decided that I would open my eyes real wide everytime I was around her. As a child, all I wanted to do was please. I wanted to please her and I would try anything. I just wanted to be loved, so I would open my eyes as wide as they would go and maybe she would love me. Like she did her son and my younger brother. Maybe she would love me like that. Alice.

I can still see myself, five years old. Laying in my bed in my tiny bedroom. I could hear them shouting in the kitchen. I watched a small spider climb up the side of my wardrobe as my dad and my new stepmother fought about money, as they had since the moment she and her two children stepped foot into our house. Our house- my dad's, my brother's and mine. A month earlier I had suddenly acquired two new stepsiblings and a stepmother who saw me as nothing but a burden, like the mildew problem we'd always had in our bathroom that dad figured would go away if he just ignored it for long enough. This was the way I was looked at in her eyes. My room had been divided in two, dad had built a paper thin wall to seperate my new half-room from the half now occupied by the stepsister, eight years old at the time, despite the fact that I had this new life thrown at me and had given up so much for her, I liked her, she was quiet and she had these beautiful eyes, the type of eyes that hid terrible secrets behind them. Perhaps influenced by what I know now, I can remember thinking, even at such a young age that something was wrong with her. Muffled by the sounds of my father and stepmother's argument I could here the faint sobs of stepsister crying out into the night. I ran through the possible causes in my mind, for her distress. I concluded that she was sad about moving, which was perfectly understandable. I was sad that they were there as well. If it wasn't for the noises and conversations I heard through the tiny wall that seperated our beds I would have been left in the dark as to why stepsister chose to move in with her dad at the end of the year. It was apparent to nobody but me that stepbrother, fifteen at the time was doing bad things to stepsister in the night. At only five I was unsure what exactly it was that stepbrother was doing to her. I heard him tell her things like "you know you like this", "you deserve this" and the terrible things he would do to her and her mother if she told. I assumed these awful consequences applied to me as well, I kept stepsisters dark secret and attempted to comfort her as she cried on the other side of the tiny wall after stepbrother had gone. It was a dark secret that we shared between us for many years and I have come to know stepsister very well in last little while. She has helped me heal from my past better than any professional and I will always be grateful to her. Until tomorrow, Alice.

This is the beginning of my story. I have come so far now, that when I look back, I see a different person than the one in the mirror now. I am a changed human being and I ask that you save judgement, as I am no longer the person who's story I will share. I am sharing this with you in hope that something I have been through, and how I made it through will change the future for someone else. I have only pieces of my mother. The memories I have of her are as hazy and hard to focus on as dirty photographs. My favourite is of her face as beautiful as a song, looking down at me. She is standing in the grass infront of the swing I am on. She is pushing me and we are laughing. She has silky gold hair that glistened in the sun that day. I had that hair once. My mother left when I was three years old, my dad still has the note she left us tucked in a box in his attic, that small blue box moved with us from house to house all through my life. The note said all sorts of pretty things about how we were the most beautiful children, she loved my father and that she'd come back some day. It has been twenty two years and I've given up hope. I was allowed my vision of her, radiant and happy, pushing me on a swing until I was seven when my dad confessed to me on the way to school, that my mother, my hero, was addicted to cocaine and that is why she left us. This drug that I wouldn't come to understand for many years, was the reason I had been left without a mother for over half my life. It was earth shattering. That day, driving to school I thought that this news meant the end. The end of my childhood the end of my innocence. Little did I know my childhood would soon be ripped away from me with whirlwind force. This was not the end by any stretch. This was the beginning. Alice.