How to Heal a Crippled Angel

Prologue

I received a job offer several days ago that was simply too perfect to pass up. A job offer of my dreams. An offer that I had been waiting to hear for years. Unfortunately, this particular job requires me to move my family out of our comfortable lives, to relocate to an entirely different state and begin again in a new place. As with any major move in life, this has forced me to go through boxes and items that have remained untouched and gathering dust in the corners for many years. The type of boxes that include memories of your childhood, of your parents, or random, obscure items that would hold no value to the rest of the world but to you, they are the world because they each tell an individual, sentimental story. It was while I was rummaging through a box that contained many scrambled pieces of my college years - the mere smell of the box had me reminiscing of long, sleepless nights, out-of-the-blue road trips, and many firsts - that I stumbled across an item I had forgotten I even possessed. Perhaps the item that held the most emotionally powerful sentimental value that I owned.

It was a journal entry. More specifically, a journal entry that was written by a very dear friend of mine. She had given it to me to read one day and I, being the absent-minded person that I can be from time to time, had failed to remember to return it to her. I felt a cold chill run down my spine at the words in front of me. It brought back memories that I had long since buried in the back of my mind. Some good, some bad, many lost in that grey area of emotional turmoil.

The journal reads as follows:

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

I suppose I should start by telling you that I'm 18 and I'm in jail.

I'm not a bad person. I had no intention of doing what I did. I had no choice.

I keep having nightmares. Such horrible relivings that I wake up screaming, sweating, shaking. My cellmate helps calm me down. I feel horrible every time it happens though because she isn't getting any sleep either. She's the only one I trust right now. We have good conversations. Not that our conversations are particularly happy since neither one of us have anything very happy to talk about. One would not expect someone who was put behind bars for something she didn't do to be so sympathetic. We help each other, I guess.

I have up to five panic attacks almost every day. Sometimes they come out of nowhere, but they usually hit me full on during dinner in the jailhouse cafeteria for fear of running into someone I know. I'm paranoid and I'm not proud of it.

My trial is in three months. Everyone has told me that there is no chance that I will lose, but I'm terrified that I'm going to have a panic attack in the middle of the courtroom.

My mother is going to be there. She is in jail too. I don't want to see her again. I want nothing to do with that bitch. To think I kept her secrets for all those years.

My father will be there. I couldn't care less about him since he couldn't care less about me. He made promises that he never kept. Promises that could have saved me from so much pain.

There will be...others there as well. People from my past. People that I had never wanted to lay eyes on again. They will be there as witnesses, to testify to...whatever it is they think is worth defending.

I've never been one to get claustrophobic, but I feel as if the walls of this tiny, grey cell are closing in on me. Watching me. Waiting to pounce and wake me from the best dream I've ever had in my life and send me back into the depths of my darkest horrors. Who would have ever thought that jail would be a dream come true? The best place I've ever been?

I'm sitting in the safest place that I have ever been and I'm so afraid.

I'm so afraid.

You may be wondering why I would have an incredibly personal account written by a friend in a box full of my own belongings. Why a friend would even trust someone else with something so intimate, let alone allow them to read it. Well, that is why I have decided to share this story with you. It is a story that I believe deserves to be told and one that I pray will touch you in the way that it touched me all those years ago.

Due to the fact that this story includes real people, places, and events; names have been changed - including my own - as well as several minor details in order to ensure the privacy of all involved at the time.

My name is Madison Peters and I will do my very best to recount this story to you as I remember it occurring to me.