Dear Everyone Who Still Cares,

I know that it's been quite a while since you've heard from me. If any of you still care then I thought that I deserve you an explanation. Some stuff has been going on in my life lately. Bad stuff. For a while it was just me trying to get caught up on school work and such cause I had bad grades. Then on Febuary 22, 2008, my dad comitted suicide. He shot himself in the head. It's been a really difficult thing to go through, because even though I barely ever got to see him, we were really close. He was my rock. I sort of turned to him when everything was going wrong. And since I've never had and never will have a close relationship with my mom, I really don't have any parents. So after that happened I drove six hours south of where I live to go to his memorial in Santa Cruz. That was really difficult because I hadn't met a lot of my family, like aunts, uncle, grandparents, and cousins on his side, and considering that we had to meet under these tragic cicumstances was worse. The day after the memorial I went up into the mountians with my brother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins to spread half of his ashes. Let me tell you, that is a wierd experience. And painful.

So, we got back home, a few weeks past, and I was supposed to go to Maui. This is a trip that I had been planning for months, but since my dad lived in Maui for 22 years and that's really where his heart was, it turned into his second memorial, so that his spirit would be in two places that he loved. I'm sure that some of you know that ATA airlines went bankrupt, and that was the airline that my mom, brother, and I were with. Since we paid cash, we couldn't get our moeny back caues they had no money to give us, so, all in all, we were 1,300 dollars in the hole and no trip to Maui cause no other airlines were honoring our tickets.

Then my mom crashed her brand new car.

Then someone else died.

My moms best friend and my sort of second mom. She died of cancer a week ago, maybe less.

So, all in all, this is what my life has been over the past few months, and this is why you haven't heard from me. I don't know when, or if, I'll ever post again.

Love,

Shannon