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Chapter Seven

Dear Diary

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March 7, 2010

Dear Diary,

It's me. I know, it's been a little while, but you're all I have left, just you. Nothing else exists anymore. Not my home, not my family, not my life. . .

Everything is gone.

I don't know what to do. Where do I go, how will I live, how will I survive?

I'm not sure I can do it. I don't want to.

So why am I writing you now? I can't really give you that answer.

Maybe it's just because you were there and I found you in the bag on the floor that had a few of my things in it; or maybe it's so I don't forget what I used to have.

With you I can climb back inside my memories and remember for a moment—a split second in time, that things used to be different. I had a family and a life before this. I had it all, and now I have nothing.

This isn't home. I'll never be home. I'll never get back what I lost and I know that.

A man came into my house and did something awful, something horrible, and I don't think I can even write it on paper. I don't want to. I want to wake up from this nightmare, but I can't.

He said I was lucky, he said that things could be so much different. He told me that none of this was in the plan, and that he didn't have to keep me. But I'm here, so how does that make any sense?

The tears keep coming, I can't stop them. It hurts so much to think about what he did. The things I saw, they haunt me whenever I close my eyes. I can't. . . I can't do this.

I'm alone. I'm scared. I'm afraid. And I have no one to turn to.

For the first time ever, it's just me.

So I'm writing to you, and I'm desperately searching for answers I know you can't give. I wish you could write back, I wish you could tell me everything will be fine and things will go back to the way they were.

But you won't—they won't.Nothing will ever be the same.

I hope at some point my dreams will take me back. A girl can wish, right?

I hate this.

How could he do this to me? Why did he take them from me?!

The moment that door opened, and that man came rushing in, I knew something really bad was happening. I wish I was stronger, I wish I had stood my ground. Maybe if I had then none of this would have happened.

Maybe if I had yelled and screamed he would have stopped what he was doing. But I didn't. I ran, I hid under the bed and prayed he hadn't seen me.

But he found me.

An evil man pulled me out from beneath my bed. A man with cold eyes and no emotion, he stole me from my home. He packaged me in a trunk and drove me away in the darkness.

I tried to fight, but he yanked me from my hiding place like I was a wild cat. The way his fingers pinched the back of my neck, it was as if he didn't see me as human. I screamed and kicked, I bit anything I could get my mouth on. He didn't care. Nothing phased him, nothing hurt him. He just took me like I belonged to him.

He thinks I'll forget what he did, but I won't. It doesn't matter how hard he tries to make me forget, I know who I am. And I'll never let him talk me out of it. The first chance I get, I'm gone.

— F