She wasn't always afraid of everything. She was remembered clearly as the girl who was one of the boys. She played in the mud, wore pants and t-shirts, sneakers that she wore down until there was a hole in the soul, and despite the fact she was in fact a girl, the boys invited her to a game of tag all the time. Her smile held true, and could be seen well within the blues of her eyes. Her heart held love far more then she could give all at once. She offered a hand to those in need, would lay down her own toys to pass on to another. She would give her own food to those who didn't have anything to eat and she would bring home small animals she had found abandoned in the rain. She started to grow up, and things began to change. Friends had moved away, friends had chosen sides, and although she began to see what life could do, she held true to the love she held in her heart. By junior high, while her body began to change, and friends began to leave her side, she still had the love she held inside. However that began to change and slowly she began to lose the heart of the life she held dear. By senior high, her mind had changed, her thoughts had darkened, and her love had dissipated. The darkness grew over the years after and by the time she graduated, she was nothing more then a shell of who she used to be. Her heart had cracked and shattered, her mind had begun to wonder, her body was immobile and her dreams had become lost.
This had been merely a journal entry I wrote months ago when I first met up with the girl of my past. My name is Jett Myers, I'm just an average twenty-four year old, newly graduated from college, living in an apartment, guy. I had moved away after graduating high school at eighteen to study engineering. Since then I'd been away from home, rarely coming back for holidays. The occasions that I did, I never noticed the silence of the neighbors house as their only child was no longer living with them. I never put in any thought to it, or worked up the curiosity to ask if maybe she'd gone off to college or something. No, instead I let it dwindle through the years. It wasn't until last year, where I finally decided to come back home for Christmas and New Year's, did I find out the truth. A small conversation had come up at some point on Christmas Eve about people not having family to celebrate with. Somehow I began to think of the neighbors instantly, maybe it was because of the darkness their house fell in, with no lights inside or out, but I spoke up then. I asked about them. Seeing how I played with the girl who lived there all the time. My own house fell quiet, as everyone took in my question and how to answer it. I didn't know what they pondered at the time. Now I do.
I was blind to what was happening in grade school, when we got into junior high, we split into different friend groups, by the time high school came, we never saw much of each other. Even for neighbors, we got home at different times, and I never saw her outside. I hadn't known what life she trenched through all by herself until my twenty-third Christmas. I tired to visit, thinking that I'd be given the chance to see her again. However, she never allowed it. I tried for months after that, coming home more to try and visit her then I was coming to see my own family. It was about three months ago that changed, she gave in. My schedule however didn't free up until now and as I sit in the lobby of the Jensen Institute of the Abused, I write to you. Honestly, I'm nervous. She was a childhood friend, a neighbor, a classmate, but apparently I never treasured her enough. Some friend I used to be. Oh, looks like I'm being called in any minute. Next time remind me. Remind me, to tell you her story. The story of a frightened and abandoned young girl named, Ti Fitzgerald.
