It's been five months since I came back to Tree Hill, and it seems that everything is going fine.
I've got a job at a record store and I've moved in with Lucas. Three days a week, I work as a volunteer at the rehab center of a nearby town and I hope that maybe one day we can open one here in Tree Hill.
I'm still in touch with Erik and Nia, and I've even talked to Rosey on the phone a couple of times. Agnes left the center a month before I did, and she came back to her parent's home. I'm happy that's she's doing well.
The rehabilitation process is hard, and it doesn't stop when you leave the center. Leaving the center means you're clean. But living normally again is not easy, and you have to be ready for whatever you may find once you're out.
After my dad and Lucas visited me at the center, I found myself working even harder to get better. The path looks completely different when you know there is someone who loves you waiting for you at the end.
They didn't visit again, I asked them to give me some time to focus and to work on my problems, but I talked to them on the phone once a week.
And luckily, they were not the only ones who cared. When I arrived in Tree Hill, my friends threw a welcome party for me.
I admit things were tense at first, but I didn't expect otherwise. They love me, they were happy to see me and they were sorry about the way they had acted. But they were hurt too.
It has taken some time, but I feel I can trust them again, and I think they feel they can trust me too. Although there are still some parts of my experience that I haven't told them about. I'm not ready yet.
The only one who knows everything is Lucas. It has been very difficult to tell him about certain things, but I don't want any secrets between us. Especially that kind of secrets.
I told him about my baby girl, because she was so important to me. She was the one who gave me the strength I needed to get out of that hell. I know that, in a way, I owe her my life, and I want Lucas to know it too.
And there are other things he needed to hear. I lived with an abuser and I sold my body to many men. Aside from the emotional damage, some of them also left physical scars. I wanted Lucas to know where they came from. I wanted him to understand and accept my past. And if he couldn't, I wanted to offer him a clean way out.
But he understood. And he accepted me as I am now, fragile and scarred in many ways. Every night, he holds me in his arms and tells me that he loves me, that he's proud of me. He tells me that he doesn't care about the mistakes I've made. He says that I'm human, that I'm a fighter, a survivor. He says that he will always be there for me. He asks me to never leave him.
And every night, we embrace each other and we promise that we will always be together.