DEAR READER

Dear reader, I write to you because I would like to share my story with you. It is a story of determination, losing track, passion, betrayal, friendship, and most of all, it is a tale of hope that might help you get along better with your life or see things in a new perspective than you would before reading this book. You can achieve whatever you want in life if you only believe it. I have been looking for happiness all my life, and in order to find it, I had to start listening to my conscience and start doing the right things. Not only was it the right thing to do to others, but it also took away the bad emotions connected to not doing right and lit up the way for joy to come into my life. I just learned that all things that are keeping you doing things you don't like are sin. We may call them "addiction this" and "addiction that," but they are all sin. I would have resented hearing that at the top of my addiction, but I know now that the enemy, the devil, is the one who keeps this knowledge away from your heart. The devil does not want you to be happy, and what I found after talking to a huge number of people is that everybody just wants to be happy. So I ask, Dear God, Father in heaven, please help me write my story as honest and helpful as I can. Help it help this reader find what he or she is looking for in their lives and, most of all, find the love for themselves and be their own best friend and treat others in the same way. Be who you are, but be your best version of you. And help me try and be the best version of me. This I ask in your son Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

A SUMMARY OF THE MEMORIES OF A PAST

It was a summer day in 1979 that this baby child was born. She resisted and twisted for two weeks, and when she finally came, her forehead came first. She was nearly strangled by the cord around her neck. The doctors took her and ran out of the room. She never connected with her mother, and her mother never connected with her. Her surroundings were wild. She had a sister and, later on, got a brother. They were all raised in different parts of the house, isolated from one another. The house was haunted, and her room reminded of a prison cell. Besides a tiny window in the roof, there was no light coming into her darkness. Outside her window was the dark and starlit sky. She cried at night, wondering why — why she had to live above the deadly living room. Voices and hatred made the air stand still. She had no will of her own. She was born to be her father's property. He was full of hate. And the little girl hated his ways. She carried love within her heart. And she created art. She made a song to prove them wrong, and then what happened would not be as bad as it was good for nothing, not as long as she made a song or a poem. Those little victories she hid in her head and rarely talked about. That way no one could mess it up or take it away from her.

Day in and day out, she was living in fright, all alone in her prison cell in hell. She was destined to live to tell. In the meantime, she tried to be good in those mean times. Cold-hearted beatings from the man with the iron fist. He handed her bruises and memories of a life in risk. A living hell, she could tell that her virginity was already taken when she entered first grade — first grade and a few hours of getaway from the haunted house, her haunted home. She did her very best. Only perfect was nearly good enough for the devil. Driven by hatred, she delivered. She can remember how she lost contact with her body. Her mom and dad twisted her hands and twisted both her arms. They divided her wholeness by pressure to her joints. Being disconnected from herself, she stopped drawing, could not feel her own fingers. They were twisted away from their original position. She would turn cold, never thought she would get very old. And here she is this very day. She cried her pain away and is finally releasing all her disappointments. Post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks were what the devil ordered so many years ago. She is now thirty-five and stronger than ever before. And in her mind is a wish for the best for the rest.

IN DETROIT STARTING MY WRITING

I sit in a motel room in Detroit. It is quiet. This is where I start writing my story. I hear the sound of the fan; it keeps me warm. The snow outside looks pretty and innocent. I watch TV, daytime gossip; it is nice to hear someone talk when I am by myself, soothing my nerves in a city I do not know. I pray to my Father in heaven, He who has always been there in my life giving good influence in my upbringing and guidance in a tried life, my guiding conscience. I came here because M&M lives here in Detroit. I admire his determination and his strength. This is the place I chose to soothe my nerves and...