Every morning I wake up in tears. The salty droplets painting a landscape on my face. Each one heavy with the weight of my pains. How one night could start out so amazing and end up becoming the worst night of my life. I don't know, you tell me. This is the story of my life, all of its good parts, and the bad ones too. I don't need you to believe it, but I do need you to listen. Only then will you come to understand my sorrow, come to understand my tears. For my name is Hope Manuella. Hope.. surely there has never been a more ironic name for a person in all the world. My life has been filled with anything but.

The only place to start is the beginning. I can't say how much of this is true and how much is the fanciful workings of a young girl, but I will tell it as I remember it. My first memory is of the color red, a hand squeezing mine as I am jerked into the back of a red van. My final glimpse of freedom being my mothers terrified face as she watched us speed away. I still remember that face, terror stricken and helpless. I never saw her again. Not even at the end. For my story has already had its ending. But, I get ahead of myself.

Next, I remember darkness. The dark of the space beneath my blanket, the only safe haven I had. The darkness of the night as I fled so many years later, branches tearing at my clothes. That flight still stands out vividly in my mind. The great gasping pants that tore past my lips, the stitch in my side as I continued to push myself harder and faster, and the knowledge that they would find me. Find me they did and then it was only darkness. It's funny, I always thought I would cry at the end. But, when it actually happened I found an overwhelming sense of relief.

Hope, how little I had in my short life. Hope, the name given to me by birth and the mockery they made of it as they still insisted on calling me by it. Where I ended up afterwards, you'll find out one day. But, know this. Here, I am no longer Hope, I am more.