All my life I felt different, and not in the quirky aspect but of a sinister kind. One would never guess because of how I look. You could say I'm gilded. On the outside I am golden. I appear as that all American girl that graces coca cola ads, bright and beautiful, shining like the sun, but inside is a hollow darkness, void of life, this bleak emptiness. I have no soul. You can only love me at a far distance because like the sun, if you stare for too long you'll be blinded and if you dare get close to me I will burn you.

I learned early how to pretend, how to play make believe and fool others including myself into seeing this illusion of me as perfect and believing in this false delusion of me being normal. The only talent I ever had was the ability to believe the lies I make up as the truth, the a bility to rewrite memories. When I lie, I sound like I'm telling the truth, because at that moment, and in my current mind, I am. I can delude myself like no other into seeing only what I want to see and creating imaginary foes to put all the blame on. I have the gift of blissful ignorance.

My greatest problem in life is people expecting too much from me. They expect more than too much, they expect me to be their prize, to adorn their lives and live up to their unreachable fantasies. I can't recall a day where I wasn't told how much of a blessing I was, or how I brought sunlight to the family, or how I saved my father from despair. Everyday I'm told I'm perfect when I'm anything but perfect and everyday I fear the day when they discover that and disown me.

I'm not special, I have no special talent except for embroidery, no high intelligence judging by my inability to score higher than a 'C' in every subject, and certainly no glowing personality. The only thing I have going for me is beauty, beauty that's soon to reach its peak and fade away, beauty that I obsessively slave to attain and maintain. Oh I do have money, but technically I really don't have money because it's my father's money and having it means I can't have a life of my own.

Another expectation I can't reach. My father expects me to always be his, he truly believes he owns me, to him I'm his most prized possession that he'll never let anyone take let alone touch. He will never let me get married, no, I'm expected to be forever virginal, untainted.

At home I'm not allowed to do anything, I can't go anywhere on my own without my mother, I can't learn to drive, I can't even have my own private bank account, anyone I want to invite over has to be approved by my father and no one meets his standards. To have to ask permission for the most basic privileges every man is entitled to is demeaning. I was trapped in that godforsaken house!

I love my father but I also fear him, it's like he's two different people and at the flip of a dime he can change. It's constant walking on eggshells. One moment he's hugging me and lovingly stroking my hair calling me his princess and the next he's tightly gripping my hair bashing my head against the wall and calling me a vindictive whore. He scares me. Sometimes he'll violently yank me me out of bed in the middle of the night, yelling at me, falsely accusing me of undermining him and plotting run away with some boy. It always ends with him forcing me to kneel on rice and pray before him till the crack of dawn. Thought lately the night raids have stopped ever since my father installed straps on my bed not just to keep me in place but to keep my hands from roaming. The straps were my mother's idea, they were her fourteenth birthday present to me.

I refuse to feel any shame, I could apoligize as much as my mother needs me to, I could even shed tears as I grovel before her, but deep down I didn't feel sorry for myself and of my actions, I only felt anger that she caught me. I am what I am, and if that is a crime then so be it.

My mother inffuriates me to no end, but not in the way you think. I don't understand her, I refuse to. She acts like a noble victim, she endures the worst of my father's abuse, but unlike me and my brothers, it is a choice for her. She has her own money, a business degree, talent in management, she could make a wonderful life for herself free from my father, and yet she stays and obeys. My mother just loves being the victim so damn much. My mother is happy so long as she could be self rightoeus and adorn herself with the shame of other's to compliment her self proclaimed innocence.

My mother claims to be religeous, a truly devout Catholic, which is complete poppycock. She doesn't love God, she loves using God as an excuse to smite whoever makes her feel insecure, she enjoys twisting the word of God to fit her own selfish agenda, to her the bible is just a giant list of reasons to punish people. She's as good a Christian as the Marquis De Sade.

Myself, well, I'm pure in body but in my mind lies wicked carnal desires no pious God-fearing girl should have. The yearnings run through my mind and body every waking moment. I'd do anything fulfill my fantasies and would happily surrender everything for a man who can reach my own expectations. I want torrid and unbridled lust of the most forbidden kind.

And then came Christopher. He was gentle and kind, beautiful as Adonis, young and vibrant. He was my uncle, and I didn't care. I wanted lust and instead I got love.

It didn't feel wrong to love him, it felt like it was pre-destined, as if it were instinctual. There's a brightness in him, a warmthness I never knew. When I'm with him I feel like I am where I belong. It's a familiarity I cannot describe, like I've known him my whole life. We have this bond between us that I can't have with anyone else. With him I felt like I could achieve anything, even perfection.

It wasn't planned, it wasn't a plot against my father, it was love pure and simple. Christopher had to be mine and mine alone and the thought of another girl having him and not me was enough to kill me.

I could have had any man in the world and I had planned on marrying a rich man who would take me far away from my father. Christopher wasn't part of my plan, he was never suppose to come into my life. He was the opposite of what I wanted for myself and I didn't care. I didn't care that he was my uncle, I didn't care that he was poor, I didn't care that being with him meant that we'd be disowned and penniless. It didn't matter because he was all I needed and wanted and I'd rather have just him and only him with every hardship than have my father's love and all the riches in the world. As long as he was with me, everything would be all right.

Of all the regrets I may have in life, Christopher will never be one of them. My mother could switch my back a thousand times over, my father could damn me to hell and back, and I will never bow my head down in shame and deny my love for Christopher.

I didn't seduce him and he didn't take advantage of me. For three years he didn't lay a hand on me, for three years we were just very close friends, and all we did in the three years we were together was talk, and when we were away from eachother in our own schools we wrote one another. Never underestimate the power of personal letters. Our letters started as friendly coorespondences of a few sentences and soom a few sentences turned into a few pages.

It's not a seduction when you don't use your body, it's not a seduction when it takes three years to win that person over, no it's devotion, utter dedication. It was not easy, it was work; I worked hard to get his love, harder than he worked to get his degree. Each love letter was an essay I had to do intensive research to write and each conversation was a memorized script I painstakenly rehearsed the day before. Oh how I studied, oh how I crammed, and oh how I did my homework to learn not only act like but to become his perfect vision of a wife. I didn't seduce him because men as good as him can't be seduced, not by the body. I had to change myself, I had to become all that I wasn't.

Christopher made me feel like I can be normal and have that picture perfect suburban life I see in magazine ads and use to play act in my dollhouse as a little girl. I could have a little family just like the dolls I owned, it'll be just the three of us, father, mother, and baby, and we'll call ourselves The Dollangangers.

Christopher is worth all the suffering in the world because he is the only person in this world I am capable of loving more than myself. Loving Christopher will be my salvation.

The problem with finding salvation is the sacrifices you have to make to attain it and realizing that salvation is not at all satisfaction, it's starvation.

To a sheltered seventeen-year-old girl running away with the boy of your dreams is the ultimate fantasy, the most romantic of ideas. In my mind I had pictured us driving off in the sunset to Mrytle beach and making love on the sand as many times as our bodies would allow, just like in the movies.

Trouble is, there's no such thing as honeymoon when you're running away with only five-hundred-dollars to your name.

The first thing we did wasn't making love in the nearest meadow, it was driving to a used car dealership and trading down my sixteenth birthday present for for some cheap ugly lemon with scratchy stained seats. Our first romantic meal as a couple was tuna melts and crackers at a rest stop diner in a dirty booth with gum under the table. Our first night we stoped at a motel, not a hotel, a motel, a motel with shared communal bathrooms and outside showers. Worst of all Chris was too tired from driving all day to make love to me that night. I couldn't even have that.

It only got worse, oh how it got worse. My morning sickness decided to kick in the next day and I threw up in the car and all over my favorite silk dress. Chris didn't know I was pregnant and he got a little mad that failed to divulge that tiny detail.

That was when he changed. He wasn't fun after that, he was all serious and even more of a tightwad. We had like nine months give or take, plenty of time, no need to worry now, it's not coming right away. But no, we have to worry now, we have to make decisions now, we have to figure out a plan now. Nevermind that now is our time, ours and ours alone to go out and live and experience all that's out there. We owe it to ourselves to be happy and free regardless of consequence. Why can't he understand that?

The pregnancy wasn't that much of an accident, I was supposed to get a diaphragm, but it was far too risky to visit a gynocologist to be fitted for one and then have to pick it up at the pharmacy, imagine the scandal if someone I knew were to see me, I'd be just mortified, they'd think I was that kind of girl. Besides, a baby from Christopher is a blessing. The thought of having a part of him growing inside me under my heart was too beautiful to resist. A perfect baby that would bond us forever, how could I not want that?

I've never been around a baby in my whole life, not one. I've always had such a curiosity about motherhood, I know absolutely nothing about it. I've never even seen an actual pregnant woman belly and all. I really want to experience having a baby, the euphoria of giving birth to cooing baby who will forever love me at first sight and dote on me. I'll dress the baby up in such adorable outfits that would coordinate with mine and we'd stroll in the park together, him in a bright yellow Silver Cross pram that compliments my golden salon curled hair and the pastels I wear, and everyone will stare in envy of me. I can't wait to be a mother, I'd be the most beautiful mother of them all.