You know there is one memory that has always and will probably always haunt my dreams and past memories and it has nothing to do with rape, molestation, beatings or mental abuse. It is the face my aunt had when she seen me excited when I seen my mother for the first time in a very long time. It was a feeling that even as an adult I cannot understand myself. I felt this happiness within her presence, just being close to her and she seemed just as happy to see me. I was merely a child and I needed that love from my mother, why do we feel that we need that connection when we know heartbreak is only a beat away? I needed it and always had needed it. She gave birth to me and I still remembered the days when she was braiding my hair and tucking me away to bed with a bedtime story. It was not the allowance of men to use me for their own needs and pleasures that lingered on my mind, it was the mother that she use to be. I am thirty six years old and I am still searching for her, for the childhood kiss that will always be remembered, the go go go as I am sliding into home base at a softball game. How can a person in their right mind forget the pain and suffering that was given to them? How can we forget all of the tormented nights that we suffered through at the hands of the one person who was always to keep you safe? We're human is how, we cannot stop the connection that we have had since birth, we want to go back into time and change so much but yet none of it is changeable so we let ourselves only remember what we wish to remember. I will always love and hate my mother until my dying day. I will always wish for her best interest and safety even though she stopped caring about mine at a very young age. I will always have that hope that she will show her face and give me those answers that I know she will never admit to herself or me. It is like a pregnant woman craving her pickles and ice cream and no words or rolled eyes will ever change what is in the deepest part of your heart that is always to hide in the shadows of denial. To my aunt whom I hurt so much on that fateful day that would lead a 12 year old on her own and then in the states name, you will and have always been one of the people in my life who showed me what life is really about, family, love, hope and fulfillment. A child knows not what they NEED, they only know what they WANT and I so badly wanted the mother that a five year old remembered. I love you and I am sorry that you ever had to feel the pain that you felt when I picked what I wanted and not what I needed. You have always been in my heart and always will as a positive, not a negative <3 Angie Freeland