I look out my window and everywhere I look I see rebirth. The Earth is renewing herself with the coming of spring. Flowers are blooming, the trees are budding with new leaves. And at the same time I am reborn.

It started over five years ago on Valentine's Day. Well, that's when I say it started; it probably started long before then. On that date, my friend presented me with one of those large heart shaped boxes filled with chocolates. That's what started me down this path. We started dating, taking our time to expore our feelings. After a while, we started going to his "Aunt's" apartment to make out. My parents didn't like this new man in my life. They felt that he brought out the wrong things in me. But I was 16. I didn't care and really wasn't interested in what they thought. In my mind at that time, my parents were always wrong.

On August 20, 1996, he proposed to me. Like the naive teenager I was, I agreed. I thought I was in love. I have never been in love I have come to realize. I was ready to give up all my dreams for this man, something I should never have to do. I had no ring. I never received one. We looked and when I found one I liked he applied for credit to finance it. It never happened though. The one thing I will always regret is the fact that I slept with him. I remember that night so vividly, even to this day. The agony he put me through making me wait like he did. The pain my body was put through. I was by no means ready for this or for what it did to me emotionally afterwards. I have never been ready for sex. As hard as I try now, it's something that I have a hard time saying no to.

In December, my mom brought something to my attention that I could not deny. The love of my life had been lying to me. I went back and found my journal I had kept at that time and found out that I had suspected way back in the second month of the relationship. If only I had trusted my feelings then. I had suspected it at times, but then, right when I would be about to confront him on it, some minute truth would be revealed and I would forget all about it. It was almost as if he planned it that way.

I thought things would be fine. I would never see him again and I could just get on with my life. That wasn't to be. The Monday after I broke up with him, I stayed home from school. The day I did break up with him, I spent most of the night crying. I went to bed and cried until 11 and then woke up at 3am and cried some more until my parents got up. I slept on the floor, not wanting to sleep in my bed, fearing the dreams that would come of that. I was nowhere near over him and nowhere near ready to confront him. I hadn't put the problem to rest in my head. But confront him I had to do. The Tuesday I went back to school, he showed up at lunch. He pulled me aside from all my friends and asked me why I had broken up with him. I couldn't tell him. I begged him to leave, and he finally did, after I agreed to meet with him after school. When he finally left, my friend came over to me and asked me what it was all about. I told her nothing, though she said she could feel the tension generated from us from ten feet away. I waited. I waited not only for the bell to ring and release me from the hell I had thought was freedom, but also for another friend to get back from lunch. When I saw her pull up with her boyfriend, I practically pounced on her, telling her what had transpired a few minutes earlier. I then begged her to wait with me for one of my teachers to get back from lunch. He was a friend and knew about the relationship I had had. When I told him that my ex was coming back and he'd want answers, he just told me to calm down. I was really scared at that point, I remember. Later, in sixth period Chemistry, the dean of my grade (whom everyone knew as a very difficult woman to deal with) came to get me out of class. Amid whispers of "Oh my, the good student is getting escorted out! I wonder what she did," I left class early. Once outside, the dean told me that my teacher had reported the incident to her and she was here to make sure I got off campus safely. She escorted me to my locker and then to my friend's car, who gave me a ride home from school. She waited with me until I pointed my ex out to her. She then ran off after him.

After that, things stopped for about a week. I began to put my life back together. I started gymnastics and tried to move on by keeping myself as busy as possible. The winter formal came. I stayed home, having no one to go with. The week following the dance, I found out my friend who lived around the corner from me, who gave me rides home from school, had gotten in trouble for coming in late. Therefore, I was the only one he could give a ride home to because we did live right around the corner. This meant that instead of me getting home at 3:30 in the afternoon, I was home more towards 3:10. None of my friends knew of this because I didn't tell them, so I never expected the phone to ring until around 3:30 or so. Well, the very first Monday after the formal, I was just getting home when the phone rang. I ran to answer it. It was my ex. We talked for a minute and then hung up. The next day, the same thing happened. I didn't think anything of it, but told my mom anyway. Well, the following day, Wednesday, she came home from work early and we went Christmas shopping. Nothing happened. The next day I had gymnastics practice and Friday, I was home alone again. Nothing happened for the rest of that week.

Christmas came and went and then the day after Christmas, I was packing to go to my father's house for a few days. I was going tearing through my room looking for my discman. I couldn't find it, nor could I find my CD carrying case. Then when I looked, I was missing something like 16 CD's. I started calling people, trying to locate the missing discs. No one had them or had seen them. Well, I just moved on, not thinking about, thinking that they might show up or something.

When I got back from my father's, a note magically appeared on my car. (I didn't have a license yet, but I had a car.) My step-father had found it. It was from my ex. He listed a phone number and said it was important that I call him. With my parents standing right there, I call him. He tells me he's joining the Army. And here I thought it was something important!

After that, my mom calls the police and asks about stalking laws. Well, an officer actually comes out to my house and asks what had been going on. We tell him that there had been hang up calls and of the incident with the note on the car. The officer told us to change the phone number and for me to keep a journal of anything that happened, just in case he was ever caught and prosecuted for stalking. We changed the number and things stopped.

I thought things were going to stop then, but they didn't. A few weeks later, I was diagnosed as having Mononucleousis (again). This was the second time I had had the "kissing disease" in my life and was not looking forward to forced bedrest and fluids. My doctor forced me into bed, saying that my spleen was enlarged and that I should try if at all possible not to move around too much. If I was to fall and rupture my spleen, it was possible for me to bleed to death before making it to the hospital. So for the next two weeks my routine consisted of getting up at 6am, waiting for my ride to show up to collect my homework and then falling asleep on the futon in the living room so when I woke up I would have access to daytime TV. The only visitors I had was my ride. Everyone else was too afraid to even breathe my air, thinking that they could catch this disease. Oh well. So my life was boring for two weeks and I had just gotten my driver's license! But it wasn't to stay that way for long.

On Tuesday, March 4, 1997, I was sitting up on the futon flipping through the television stations. It was around 11a because I stopped at Nickelodeon and saw that Blue's Clues would be on in an hour. Just then my Sheltie started barking. She always barked at everything when it was just myself home alone, whether it was a car door across the street or the phone ringing. Looking back on it, she was barking at the fireplace. She heard something I did not. All of a sudden, the back sliding glass door started to open. We never thought to lock it because the dog was always needing to go out in the backyard. My heart leapt to my throat and I was so terrified I couldn't move. My fear faded a bit when I saw that it was my ex. I knew who was in my house. I was still afraid of what might happen, but not completely lost.

From here, things get sketchy. I used to be able to tell you what he was wearing, right down to his shoes and baseball cap, but I can't anymore. I don't remember what was said or what happened immediately following that for a couple of days. My mom's account of what happened in the days following and my memory do not match. I do know that at some point we called the police and we got a temporary restraining (protetion) order. When we got the permanent one, I broke down and cried when the judge granted it. After all I had been through, everything finally snapped. That's all I've ever cried over the whole situation.

But things weren't over then. Yes, the stalking stopped, but he wasn't caught. He joined the Army and wrote me a three page letter. I don't remember what it said, but I know my mom called his CO and complained. I graduated from high school and a week later moved away to go to college. While still in my first semester, I received a letter forwarded from my mom from the county DA. My ex had been caught and was sentenced to 2 days in jail and 150 hours of community service. I felt cheated. I looked up what he had been convicted of. It was misdemeanor breaking and entering. I felt hurt. My mom called the DA and was told by his secretary that his daughter went to school with me and had mentioned to him that I was away at college. He didn't want to disrupt my studies for a trial, so they plea-bargained. Plus stalking is relatively hard to try. I felt horrible. I never got my chance to confront him. I never really got closure.

One would think that the fact that he had served time would serve as closure for me. It didn't. As soon as I thought the wound was closed, I went home for Christmas break. Over the New Year holiday, one of his "friends" was killed in a car accident. Seeing his "friend's" picture in the paper every day for almost a solid week, brought back fresh memories. As much as I was trying to put everything behind me, it wasn't working. It was as if the Lord was trying to make me face the demon over and over again.

For a while I couldn't stand to listen to The Police's hit "Every Breath You Take." It rattled me to the bone. There were other songs I couldn't stand to listen to, Tracy Byrd's "Keeper of the Stars" and Travis Tritt's "Foolish Pride." I still have problems from time to time.

I was lost. I was searching for a ground, a rock, anything to grab onto to keep my head above water. I finally found my rock. I know this is going to sound strange and this is usually where people start to label me as obsessive and insane, but hear me out on this. Over the summer, I started listening to pop music again. In hoping for Bree Sharp to release a video, I saw Joey McIntyre on MTV. And in that, I saw the BACKSTREET BOYS. Their video "I WANT IT THAT WAY" was tearing up the TRL countdown. Then they were gone. And then in October, they were back, with "LARGER THAN LIFE." I fell in love with the song and the video. In seeing the video, I noticed one BOY in particular. I didn't know who he was, but he was cute (in my eyes) and had something to him. I had known of the BACKSTREET BOYS through others and remember them all the way back from 1993. I remember Shania Twain throwing a fit because everyone went to her "Winter Break" to see the BOYS and not her and how the BOYS couldn't hit the high notes. I remember hearing something about one of them having heart surgery, but it was all second hand. I even remember defending them back in 1997/1998 when they released "EVERYBODY (BACKSTREET'S BACK)." All my school mates were saying "Why are they saying Backstreet's Back? They're a new group." And I would tell them, "No, they've been here a long time. They just went to Europe." Well, as I was saying, I began to love "LARGER THAN LIFE." One of my friends told me where I could get the MP3, so I downloaded it. Unfortunately, my computer was (and still is) too slow to play it without pausing. So within 24 hours, I went out and bought "MILLENNIUM." The first thing I do when I get CD's is look at the thank yous. I want to see who the artist thanks and how they do it. Well, that's where I saw this:

It was from BRIAN "B-ROK" LITTRELL. He was the one I had noticed in the video. The one with the captivating blue eyes and the gorgeous Southern accent. I immediately set out to learn everything I could about him and the BACKSTREET BOYS.

Now, it is almost two years later. A lot has changed in those two years. Where I was lost, now I am found. Where I was stumbling, now I am standing tall. Where I was trapped, now I am free.

One of the things I wished to accomplish in my life was to see my stepping stone (as I refer to BRIAN) live in person. Of course I wish to meet him, but I know that someday, when the time is right, I will. All I longed to do was to see him in the flesh. Well, on March 5, 2001, I did that. I saw him in concert. But that wasn't the part that finally opened my life. My favorite song by the BACKSTREET BOYS is "I'LL NEVER BREAK YOUR HEART." It wasn't until BRIAN and this song came into my life that I was finally able to write down what had happened to me (albeit fictional). I had heard that for this concert, the BOYS performed a medley of 3 songs on a mini-stage at the back of the arena behind the soundbooth. Well, I knew one of these songs to be my favorite. When I got to Sacramento to see the BOYS, I was pleased to see that the mini-stage was only twenty feet from me. But I was not prepared for what was to happen. When the BOYS appeared from out of the darkness on that stage twenty feet from me and started singing "I'LL NEVER BREAK YOUR HEART," something happened to me. I was shaking so badly that I could hardly stand. I wanted to cry, but somehow managed not to. In that minute and a half that BRIAN and his bandmates were singing my favorite song, something inside me changed. I looked at BRIAN and realized my life was complete. I truly didn't need to hang on anymore. When he waved at me, a joy overcame me that was unlike anything I had ever felt. It was more than just "I had been waved at by a BACKSTREET BOY." It was undescribable. There are no words to describe the way I felt then or the way I feel now. When I look at BRIAN now, I smile. Not because he makes me smile, but because of all I have been through and how strong of a person it has made me. There are not enough ways to express my gratitude to BRIAN. I tried to tell him in a letter that I sincerely hope he received. I have no way of knowing if he every got it, but I believe he knows. I probably didn't even have to tell him. Someone else did that for me.

This was probably the hardest entry I have ever had to write. It's taken me several days, and I have been sick over it. Every time I think about what happened, it still makes me sick to my stomach, but it's not as bad as it used to be. I was not expecting to tell this story to the world as I have, but something guided my hand as it had been guided before. If you'd like to read my story "I'll Never Break Your Heart," click here. Thank you for reading.

Going My Own Way