It turns out that Miami was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was able to “forget” some, but I continued to do drugs but didn’t drink anymore. I made new friends and about 6 months into the move, I met my best friend, Denice, and a few months later my boyfriend, Ben. He didn’t start off as a boyfriend right away, but I grew to love him for his heart and soul and truly couldn’t imagine being without him. His possessiveness drove me crazy, but the only time I felt truly safe was when we were together. I remember him sitting in the front booth at my work through my whole shift. It drove me crazy, but it also made me love him all the more. For a lack of a better phrase, he was my knight in shining armor. He would never let anyone, or anything hurt me and treated me like an absolute princess and will always love him for his heart and soul. We were inseparable until we were 20 years old, and he started discussing marriage. At first, I was so excited, but as it got closer to him asking me, I became absolutely terrified. I knew being married he would see me for who I really was, broken. I was absolutely terrified that he would leave me once he knew the “real” me and stopped communicating. The less I communicated, the more he pushed, and the more he pushed, the more I pulled away. I knew that I desperately needed counseling, but also knew we were too young for marriage and if I started going to counseling, I would not be able to handle the memories or the emotions and did not want him to have to go through that with me. What happened to me was my burden. I truly never understood why he loved me. I let him believe that I desperately wanted to go back to New York, and I did, but what I really wanted was my innocence and my ability to trust back and did not understand that until years later. During my pulling away from him, my grandfather got cancer, and my parents decided to move back to the same town in New York where all of my horror began.