There was a girl I once knew when I was younger. She didn't know who she was or where she came from. Her single mother wasn't really her mother. She struggled to fit in with others, because she didn't like being different - a threat to human society, she called it.

I guess she always knew she was adopted. Carrie didn't tell her and wasn't planning to, but somehow that 4 year. old cutie knew. Carrie had struggled for a long time. She had never had a place to call her own, or a place to call home. When she was just 3 years old, her father left the family. With her mother to care for 7 children, things weren't always easy. Carrie ran away from home and secretly married. Then, a tragic accident happened turning her life around - the guy whom she loved and had known for such a long time had died in a car crash.

"It was horrible", she used to say. She wouldn't sleep for nights in a row. She wouldn't stop thinking of him and all his promises, all of their promises to love for eternity.

Carrie was still young, but time just wasn't enough to make her dreams come true. She wanted someone to call her "mommy". In early spring of '94, Carrie adopted Brianna, whose 19 year old mother and father had both abandoned her. Carrie loved Brianna. She treated her like her own daughter.

She had never wanted Brianna to know. When Brianna began speaking she called Carrie "Carrie" as opposed to the occasional "mommy" or "momma". It was strange...very. It was as though this toddler could tell a stranger from the young gal who was supposed to be her mother. Carrie didn't like it. Brianna began to realize what she was doing to her mother. She began to learn to accept the new person in her life trying to make a difference. I don't know what really happened after that. Brianna never got the chance to tell me - and I never gave her that chance.

Something was happening to Carrie. It was hurting her, more than just on the inside- skin deep. Brianna, then an adolescent, could tell. She knew her mother wasn't herself. I do remember her telling me something about depression. Her mother was going through a really difficult time in her life. She had just lost her mother and 2 of her siblings were in jail for attempted murder. She was losing everyone and she knew she had no control over it. She quickly began to think that she would soon lose herself. She didn't want death to grab her before she grabbed IT.

Brianna told me that Carrie became dangerous. She took risks no mother

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