But I can’t do that now. I have a responsibility. A child growing in my belly and a man who will be my husband in just a few weeks. It’s terrifying and not the life I think I want. But there’s nowhere else to go and really any other alternative is just as bleak as the one before me. Any future is, and sometimes just having one is frightening.

The entry was written when she was eighteen, right before she married my dad. She was pregnant with my older brother, Dean, something I didn’t know. Her thoughts are terrifying, especially since I’ve recently been contemplating my future and where kids fit into the mix. But I don’t get it. My dad once told me that she used to be happy in the beginning, but if that’s the case, then when was he talking about? When was the beginning? Because in the journal entry she’d known him for only six months and she already seemed to be falling into the dark hole of despair that I’m very familiar with, no matter what I do or try to change about my life. In the end, I have depression. It’ll always be with me—with Micha and me. I’ve known this for a while and yet I’m still going forward with him, always crossing my fingers he never regrets it.

But what if he does?

I take out a drawing that’s folded up in back of the journal along with a photo of my mom on a bed with her chin on her knees and her hair falling into her green eyes that look exactly like mine. She’s smiling, but there’s something off about the snapshot, like she’s forcing herself to look happy, or maybe that’s just what she looked like when she was happy. It’s hard to tell sometimes and most of the time when I knew her, she just looked lost. She doesn’t look lost here, but she doesn’t look like she’s someone who’s got everything figured out. I wonder if that’s what I look like?

The drawing is of this vase with a single rose inside it and the petals are cracked and wilting, piling up around the bottom. It hurts my heart looking at it, because as an artist, I can guess what place her thoughts were at when she drew it because I’ve been in that place.

“Oh my God, Ella, you did not ball up your wedding dress and shove it in a duffel bag.” Lila huffs as she stomps into the kitchen with an overflowing armful of fabric and a rolled-up magazine. She’s wearing a holey pair of jeans and a plain pink T-shirt, her blond and black hair damp. “Seriously, why would you do that?”