One a.m. and I can't sleep again. It's nights like tonight that I miss California. The only place I think I ever felt alive.
I'm not always filled with so much melancholy. Only when I realize I've sold out.
For what? So people will like me? So I will feel loved?
I always felt the most loved when I loved myself.
Sometimes I have trouble remembering that person.

That summer was so hot. Even the breeze off of the ocean was warm. I still remember how beautiful the palm trees were. California just doesn't have the same light it used too.
We fought many time, always butting heads. I hated you because I hated myself.
One day you looked me in the eye and asked,"Do you think I hate you?"
I said yes.
I'll never forget the look in your eye when you told me. "You just have so much wasted potential"
You never knew it, but that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. I was never pretty or smart. I never had any talents. Those words   gave me hope that someone believed in me.
The winter was warm that year. She lied when she told me we would be a real family. You died two weeks before Christmas 2009.
I still miss you.

The house is so quiet when she isn't here. These nights I can't sleep.
All I dream about is her laughter, the pitter patter of her little feet on the hard wood, and her tiny, beautiful voice waking me in the mornings.
I never thought I could love some one so much.
I never thought my life would ever amount to anything.
Then I created this amazing human being.
Now I see, maybe this is what I am here for.

When I got pregnant, everyone told me how wonderful she would be, how incredible this experience would be....No one warned me about the moments when she is gone.
These treacherously silent moments where everything is still. They don't feel right.
Every minute I count feeling like an eternity. Every worry and fear compiling themselves single file in my mind, making me so anxious that I can't sleep.
No, no body warns you.
I hate having to share her. I'm just selfish like that I guess.
Every smile glowing like the radiance of the sun. Everything she learns is amazing and beautiful. She is like magic.
She is by far the best thing I have ever created.
These lonely days are like torture. I can't wait to have her all to myself again, to watch her sleep, and count each number with her, say each letter of the alphabet aloud.
Everyone tells you about the wonders of creating a life....No one tells you about the hole that's left when they are gone.

"Do I make you happy?" He asks me one night in the middle of a yet another classic I had never seen. It drives him crazy that I don't care for them.
I look into his soft blue eyes and think for a minute.
Does he make me happy? He has given me the life I never thought possible, I never thought I deserved. A safe place for myself and my child. He has made me see that there is more to me than the darkness, and I don't have to fight so hard. Most of all, he has made me understand that I am worth more to him than just a good time or a paycheck.
I continue to look into his eyes and respond, "Yes, quite."

Do you remember the sweltering heat the first summer you followed me here?
I know it was so long ago.
The sun was merciless, and the humidity wrapped us all in a scent of fresh cut grass.
We were so young, and so alive.
I remember the laundry mat in the middle of July just after your birthday. The air conditioning was cool on our sweaty bodies. We gossiped and chased each other around while we waited for the dryers to stop.
I still have those pictures on my phone.
Now it's some one elses turn to share those memories with you, and it both kills me and brings me immense joy to know that you can be that  happy with another woman.

Do you remember who I used to be?
I seem to have misplaced her.
Somewhere in this southern hell, she disappeared with out a trace.
I guess you just get tired of fighting after a while.
It's just so much easier to assimilate.