Life before the Island:

The night you and my dad split up was devastating. The two sentences I remember so well, "Brianne, you mommy's a bitch and kicked me out. I love you, but it's your fault." Those are the two sentences that run through my mind every day. After he said that, he walked out. When I hear those words in my head, it does nothing but re-kindle the flame of loss, hatred and anger. It still hurts, so much. Finding out we were moving to an island across the ocean just torched me, I spent the entire day crying, and wondering why everything was going so wrong all of a sudden. I would have rather been burned at the stake, shot twenty thousand times, drowned in a pool of my own spit, then move. Not that anything is wrong with the Island; I love it now, but back then…err. Not so much. The hardest thing about that was moving away from Brittany, my best friend and sister. In a small way, I wish that I had never moved away from her.

The last day home:

We were loading up the car, April 1st 2002. I still remember how sunny it was, the way the clouds perfectly aligned the sky. The weather didn't help the sadness no one wanted to show. I can still see me and Brit clinging to each other, not ever wanting to let go, how hard we were crying. We were so young; at that point, we thought we would never talk to each other again. We thought we had lost each other for ever, watching her through the back window of the car, all I had ever knew, was lost, gone, forever. That was hard, but, easier compared to the later days, or as I call, The dark years.