I run my fingers tenderly over the hard cover, quietly noticing the dulling effect the years have taken on the once bright shimmer of the blue and green design. Peculiar how my mind works, I always seem to think of everything remaining as it was, never wanting to take into consideration how time changes all it touches, myself included. For with the change of time also comes letting go and moving on, two tasks that I admit to not being particularly good at. But as I sit here, scarcely able to recognize my own faded handwriting or the passion that fueled the journals creation, the change in myself is undeniable and the confusion of that realization far outweighs any other emotion. I’m confused because my progression from past to present seemed so subtle to me that it passed almost completely unnoticed until now.

It’s difficult to explain why I dispute change so much, especially when I’m obviously much happier now then I was during the time this diary was created. Realize I stated that it’s difficult to explain, not necessarily for me to understand. Change and time go hand in hand, with one inevitably comes the other. Time has long been my unspoken enemy, sweeping me away from places and people I didn’t feel I was ready to leave. I couldn’t rightfully be angry with those that had left me, since for the most part, it wasn’t their decision to go, therefore time itself was the only place to lay blame.

There’s a passage that was written shortly prior to my fifteenth birthday. I vaguely remember being unable to find a pen that night, which explains why it’s carelessly scribbled out in pencil that has since severely paled. And although I do recall the day, the only way I can touch upon the emotions that I must have been feeling is to actually read over what I myself had written. The words depict a mixture of feelings that range from pure self-pity to an innocent misunderstanding of life itself, neither I am very proud of. I wrote of how I fought sleep, somehow hoping that maybe if I did, tomorrow simply wouldn’t come and I would remain closer to the past. I wrote of how I longed to go back to the place I knew before this pain that I had never wanted was given to me. I wrote of how my only desire was to have life as it was before and that I couldn’t understand how I was expected to continue as if nothing had happened.

Clearly, a lot of time has passed since that was written, over ten years to be precise, but this book explains in painstaking detail from where I have come. I’ve become what I had feared so many years ago would happen to me and I fight the disappointment I want to feel in myself only because I know I have no right to feel it. It’s wrong to feel shame in continuing to live simply because others did not. It’s wrong to question why the tears that use to be uncontrollable have ceased. And it’s wrong to judge myself and think that I loved them any less because the grieving has ended for me.

I’ve learned that the past is exactly that, the past. And no amount of tears, hope or wishes will ever give me the opportunity to relive it. I can only be thankful that I was given the opportunity to be there the first time. I enjoy being here and having the chance to do anything and everything I may decide I want to do because I am still among the living. All of the sleepless nights that I endured brought me to a realization. It didn’t matter how great my desire was to remain in the past with those that had failed to follow me in with the sunrise, I would be brought into tomorrow anyway until it is my time to remain behind.

As I close the journal and find a home for it on my bookshelf, I can also finally close that chapter of my life. I recognize that time may not have been my enemy after all. In fact, time along with change has brought me here, so far from the sad and frightened girl that fought them both so fervently. And with the sunrise I no longer feel the pain of being brought further from those left in the past, but appreciation that I was once again brought into tomorrow.

She couldn’t have been more then two years old when we were sitting at that table trying to teach her sign language with my mother’s help. I recall repeatedly doing the sign for “cookie” as we held a cookie in front of her big blue curious eyes. After about a half-hour with no response from her, we stopped, and my Mom began teaching us other signs, hoping we would assist in her learning. She began to quiz me on different signs that she had gone over and when she came to cookie, I couldn’t remember how to sign it. My Mom repeated it to show me and my sister quickly placed a cookie in her hand. We laughed and hugged her tightly. I remember being so proud that she was finally beginning to understand us as my mom‘s eyes filled with tears. Little did we know at that time that the word itself and not our signs prompted her response.

Her childhood was anything but typical, although my parents tried desperately to keep it as close to normal as possible. The weight of the trach on her small neck, although minimal to us, was enough to hamper her ability to walk until the age of four and she was never to crawl. I suspect it was the fear of harming herself that was more detrimental to her success then the actual equipment itself. My parents, although extremely well meaning, were also greatly overprotective, rarely allowing her to test her own abilities. Until she was able to walk, she raced her way around the house quite efficiently on a little yellow skateboard. She would lie on her stomach and push herself around using her hands and feet. She also achieved quite a bit of joy by running over the toes of unsuspecting family members.

For the first four years of her life she was attached to a heart/breathing monitor while she slept. I remember being wakened many nights by the horrifying sound of the alarm, warning that it wasn’t detecting a regular heartbeat or breathing patterns. All but one of those times, it was because she had moved and a clip came off of one of the little smiley-faced electrodes that were sticking to her chest. The chaos and fear that surrounded the time that she truly stopped breathing was horrifying. I can only remember being in the corner of the family room, while my parents and 3 other people surrounded my little sister on her changing table. My Mom was yelling that her face was blue and she wasn’t breathing. My Dad stood next to her in his red underwear, hands shaking terribly as he tried to help clear her airway. Apparently, her trach had somehow come out in the night, leaving her unable to breathe. The monitor was our only signal that something was wrong considering she had never had the ability to cry in her young life. What a painfully sad sight, to see a child crying, but unable to make a sound. Her eyes would fill with tears until they streamed down her face and her mouth would be wide open, yet there was complete silence as a blue tint consumed her tiny body. After a few short minutes, that seem more like days in my mind, the trach was put back in and her cheeks flushed pink once again.

The years ahead were filled with advances and setbacks as she returned to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia repeatedly to attempt to remove the trach and again failing. The scar tissue buildup narrowed her already minimal airways, making it a high-risk procedure that the doctors and my parents were unwilling to take. Colleen, my younger sister, was becoming despondent, fearing she would be forced to live her entire life unable to truly understand the simplicity of being a normal kid. After each failed attempt she became less cooperative, making it more difficult to advance to the next level. Although I am certain my parents had thought about the possibility of her living her life with the trach, the words were never mentioned. Everyone except Colleen saw it the same way, we would rather have her here with a trach, then not with us at all.

At the age of four Colleen decided on her own that she hadn’t a need for the trach anymore. She had done her best to convince my parents by covering the metal piece that protruded from her neck with her tiny fingers and hoarsely breathing through her own mouth, although for some reason was still unable to breath through her nose. My parents were understandably very hesitant to remove it, however agreed for my sister’s mental well being to try. Preparing for the worst they were near the phone and had a second tube nearby to insert if she was unsuccessful. We all stood by holding our breath as the piece was removed, all but Colleen that is. With a smile on her face she began to cough and proved to all surrounding her that she had overcome this obstacle.

From that day the journey has been filled almost completely with triumphs rather then complications. With the trach removed she learned to walk and then to speak. It’s my personal belief that she has since made up for the four years she was unable to verbally express herself and can frequently be heard above all over voices in the house. She has thankfully never had to have another tracheotomy preformed although the small hole that still remains in her neck is a constant reminder of the struggles of the past. She returned to C.H.O.P. two years ago, at the age of seventeen, to explore the possibility of having it closed. The surgeons fear that because of the high scar tissue build-up, that closing it may cause her airway to be severely reduced and will again have to have a tracheotomy preformed. With that possibility looming overhead she has decided to wait, hoping in the future her airway will expand enough for a higher success rate.

Now, at nineteen, I see little difference between her and any other teenager. She rebels and has mood swings that could be argued to be the best if you asked me. She spends her days working and her nights hanging out with her friends and playing her music entirely too loud without a care, as she should. The obstacles that she has overcome in her life have certainly prepared her for anything tomorrow can threaten her with. You almost have to smile when you look at her now, it’s such a wonderful change from that timid, wide-eyed baby that had a future full of doubt.

By the time Carol was a year old, she was given to her grandparents to lived in a small house that was shared with eight other children, as her parents left for her father to pursue a career in the United States Army. Understandably, she recalls little from the first few years of her life, mostly what she’s been told from other family members. Though to her, the lack of memories means that there wasn’t a horribly traumatic event to scar her and she accepts those early years, although faded, with great appreciation.

From four to eight years old, she was again living with her birth parents and now had two younger siblings, Cathy and Jimmy. Cathy, two years younger then Carol and Jimmy, four years younger would be faced with much less physical abuse, although the abuse would still be greatly prevalent in their lives. Carol, however, would prove to be the object of unthinkable cruelty throughout the next few years, and be left with recollections of beatings that would remain with her to this day.

Memories are painfully pieced together as she fights the urge to forget her past. On one occasion, she recalls being very young and walking hand in hand with her brother and sister to their house after school. Upon opening the door they were faced with their father lying on the floor, drunk and almost completely naked, with a loaded shotgun in his hand. In all of her youthful innocence, she asked her Daddy what he was doing. His reply, “I’m going to kill your mother when she gets home.” Thankfully, Carol knew to get help and the situation ended there, although they were returned home to their parents that evening.

She knows that was certainly not the beginning of her horrid childhood experiences, or was it to be the end. With a laugh she tells of being dragged out of bed by her hair and forced to wash every dish in the cabinet because she failed to clean a single bowl that was left in the sink. She doesn’t remember her exact age, only that she had to stand on a stool to reach the sink. And then laughs again and tells how she use to steal cigarettes from the store in hopes it would please her father and she would be spared a beating for the night. I’ve noticed that laugh is always present as she searches her mind for the events of her past that she’s tried to bury, but always seem to resurface. She laughs not to cry, I suppose, and to hide her humiliation. It’s a laugh of pain and disgust and one of shame that isn‘t hers to own, although she‘s adopted it all the same. It’s a laugh that I would strip her of forever if I only knew how.

It both amazes and sickens me to think that there was a time where a child could be abused so frequently and no one would intervene. Beaten for her shoes wearing out, for the stove breaking or because her mother would have sex with any man in reach to get money. Left alone in an apartment for two months at the age of ten, yet too ashamed to ask for help. The burden that she’s placed on herself is heartbreaking to hear, let alone to carry. She carries with her the guilt of a family falling apart, of her grandfather’s gun related suicide that she was to be the first to discover and of years of abuse. Somehow, even though physically she has survived, mentally she has never left. She still remains the scared little girl that is afraid to go home because she’s scuffed her new shoes.

She’s lived her life striving to please everyone around her, never taking the time to ask herself what truly makes her happy. Fearing if she fails to please that we’ll fail to love. And despite all of the words and acts of love that we show her, she continues to feel unworthy and unwanted. I’ve thought many times of how to make it undeniably clear to her how wonderful she is. I’ve told her, yet she always comes up with a reason why she feels as if she is less then what I know her to be. I’ve said how I appreciate her unconditional love and support throughout my life, but somehow she still feels as if she should have done more. I can only hope that one day she will believe me when I say that I couldn’t have wished for anything more.

Trying to put the disappointment out of my mind, I lie back and close my eyes before rolling over onto your pillow. I bury my face into it and inhale deeply, trying desperately to capture your scent in an attempt to feel closer to you. As I lie there our last conversation replays in my head. I think of how I adore the sound of your voice, even when you aren’t telling me what I wish to hear. Abruptly, I rise to my feet with a smile on my face and grab the car keys as I rush out the door.

You’re at your desk working on the computer as I enter the office and quietly walk up behind you. Placing my hands on your shoulders you’re slightly startled as you turn to face me. Still smiling, I lean over and gently kiss your forehead before placing a finger to your mouth, requesting silence. You remain still and expressionless, watching me climb onto your lap to straddle you. I run my hands up my thighs, raising my skirt and uncovering the black lace panties that are beneath. Your eyes follow my fingertips as they trace along the curves of my breasts under my button-down blouse. I press my body against yours and feel your hands on my ass trying to pull me in closer. Moving away from you I shake my head, before removing your hands and placing them back at your sides.

Instantly you grab my wrists and pin them behind me with one hand. The other finds its way back to my ass, this time with a much firmer grip you pull me to you. Shocked, I try to free myself, but to no avail. The more I protest, the tighter your grasp becomes. You stare directly into my eyes as you rip open the front of my blouse exposing my unconfined breasts underneath. My body begins to tremble under your gaze, half from excitement and half from fear, not knowing what you will choose to do next. You lower your head and take my nipple into your mouth. I close my eyes and begin to moan as I feel your tongue circling it, making it harder before switching to the other. Relaxing my body, I begin to enjoy your touch, erasing my uncertainties...

I shiver and run my hands over my body to guard against the cold air before walking over and closing the window. Thoughts race through my head as I return to my position in front of the glass, more inspecting what's on the inside as opposed to out. I am briefly reintroduced to the feelings of emptiness when I remember how little my own opinion use to matter to me, relying solely on other’s convictions. I now know to become the object of perfection to a single person is impossible, and that attempting to model perfection for everyone I came in contact with was nothing short of self-destruction. I frown and lower my gaze, as I think about how every day, with each encounter, I let my desire to be accepted outweigh the need to be true to myself. The feelings of inadequacy were suffocating.

Again I lift my head, now directing my focus on the present instead of the past. As I look at myself, I am filled with appreciation for who I am. I leave behind the heavy disappointment that accompanied longing to be someone else. I smile at myself, and pull the blanket back over my naked body, as I realize that Playboy just doesn’t know what they’re missing.

Studying his next shot intently, he doesn’t realize that I have arrived. Admittedly relieved that I have a few minutes before I’m face to face with my past, I settle into an empty seat at the otherwise crowded bar. I watch him from across the room and I am filled with a combination of emotions that is almost overwhelming. Nervousness that borders on nausea mingles with the feeling of excitement, and an aching desire to touch him again.

I turn my back to him and run my fingers through my hair as I try to regain some composure. I know I shouldn‘t be here, yet my heart wouldn’t allow me to decline. Why do I insist upon torturing myself with illusions of a relationship, with this man, that will never exist? My mind swarms with all of the reasons why I decided to exclude him from my life over a year ago as I mentally reprimand myself for the sudden surge of happiness and comfort I felt earlier when I heard his voice on the phone.

A hand on my shoulder makes me uncomfortably aware that my window of opportunity to leave unnoticed has expired. I silently plead for my heart to be strong as I turn and am directly confronted with the one person in my life I have never been able to let go. He takes my face gently in his hands: my heart begins to melt. He leans in and lightly kisses my lips. I smile softly and feel relieved as I allow strength to drain from my body. With naive honesty I confess to missing him, and because of a momentary lack of self control; I also admit that I have found it difficult to stay away. He smiles in return, and with true arrogance expresses that he knows I’ve missed him and that I must certainly be dying to have him back. A silent moment passes as his thoughtless words register making my heart horribly aware of the hurtful reality my mind has known all along. A game, just as before. His toy, there for him to play with when he desires, and to leave on a shelf if something better is within reach. Confusion sets in as I try to understand how my heart could so terribly mislead me when the truth was so blatantly obvious.

I take a few steps backward before breaking the stare and turning for the door. He grabs my arm to try to keep me from leaving, but there are too many people around for him to risk making a scene. He releases his grip, but I am the one that has let go.

As I lie there I daydream. Trying to spark a source of inspiration, for I can't write something I don't feel. I look up at the pictures placed on the mantel. Those of my family and friends. Losing myself in the past. Replaying wonderful memories in my mind. So close I swear I can smell the scent of the chlorine that lingered on our swimsuits after hours spent at my Aunt's pool in the summertime.

I roll onto my back and close my eyes. I think of my younger sister, Colleen. How I remember when she was a baby. All of the nights I spent in the Children's hospital with my mother as she paced the long white corridors. I remember the mobile my Dad would wind every night before he left, how it played a sweet lullaby. I remember how he would pretend he was coughing to cover the sounds of his cries when it was time for him to go.

I think of how lucky I have been throughout my life. Lucky enough to be surrounded by wonderful friends and a loving family, including little Colleen who is now a smart-ass 19 yr old. How close we came to losing her. I can't imagine my life without her in it.

Standing up, I stretch before walking into the living room and over to the phone. I dial that familiar number, listening to it ring until I hear the voice I was searching for.

Colleen answers, obviously having checked the Caller ID, remarks "We don't want any."

I laugh as the tears begin to stream down my cheeks. "I just wanted to call and say that I love you."