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.