I go back and forth with looking at pictures of my niece. Sometimes I need to have them all around me, and sometimes I have to not look at them because I know the feelings of despair and emptiness that I feel just holding the pictures in the frames. I look at them with such a sadness. Sometimes I cry my eyes out, sometimes I just stare at them feeling numb, in disbelief. Even after all this time, I still feel like this can’t possibly be happening. Have almost ten years gone by? They have and I know where the time went.

It went to coping with a whole new reality, trying to survive this day after day after day. Asking yourself the same questions. Feeling that anxiousness that makes my heart beat faster. Closing my eyes and wishing it away. Praying to God throughout the day. She’s the last thing I pray for when I go to sleep at night. I’m positively certain that this is how it will be, until one random day, it isn’t.

The wait and weight will be over. My niece will have read this book. She will have received the hope chest that holds her time capsule. She will have read through the scrapbooks I made for her. She will have seen the pictures. Read through boxes of paperwork. She will have seen the pictures we hold so dear. We have them in them near the dining table, we have them on the fridge, we have them in our wallets, in our rooms. She’ll see that we kept her with us the only way we knew how after she was ripped away from us without us even knowing.

We did everything we could, we fought every step of the way. She had a family who would have loved her and taken care of her, after all, she is one of our own. She will always belong to us no matter what kind of legal papers they flash our way or the smug looks they give when we come face to face. I’m still waiting for someone to jump out and say it was all a nightmare. That none of this ever happened and we opened our eyes and things were as they were before our world imploded.

The pictures make it real. They capture the moment of time that we had, so brief, in such awkward places. At a freezing park with a monitor watching our every move, because WE can’t be trusted, in attorney’s offices. In the Los Angeles court where we saw family after family come out having been ordered to be torn apart. In the pictures, you can tell we’ve been crying, trying to put on smiles so it will be hard to tell we’re dying inside.

The pictures are a whole other monster. It’s a whole separate thing to deal with. It’s a different hurt that comes from deep inside. It causes physical pain, you can feel the anguish sitting on your chest like a bowling ball. We all fight through all the emotions because it’s all worth it to see her little face. To feel for that moment that she is ours to have and to hold, to make dreams really seem like a possibility even for a moment. I hold the pictures close to my heart, close my eyes and say ‘she’s still mine …. she’s still ours.’

I can’t believe 8 years have passed.

It hurts every day, and every day it feels like the day lasts forever. I lie in bed at night going over all the details in my mind, the cut still fresh. I think about what I’ll say to my niece when we finally meet face to face. I keep reliving all the hurtful moments, all the tears, all the frustration. I wish that I could just take my niece in my arms and never let her go.

I think about the people who caused us all this pain and wonder how they can look at themselves in the mirror.

I think about what life would have been like if this had never happened to us. This is a burden that I will carry for many years to come, and I wonder how I will ever do it. I sometimes have to force myself from thinking about it because it hurts too much. I never knew that crying was physically painful, it actually hurts to cry. I look at her pictures and I want to crawl in bed and cry.

I can’t grasp the fact that so much time has gone by. I was supposed to be so close to the niece I waited for. I was supposed to be the one aunt she would have that would shower her with love and affection. So much has been stolen from us. Memories were taken that never had a chance to get made.

The most important things I need my niece to know is that I love her so much, and I’ve never stopped trying to bring her home to her rightful family. We never gave up. We never stopped missing her. She is still a part of our family even though we are apart from each other. She still belongs to us….