Epilogue

            May 19th 2009

            Hi…I’m Chelsea and I’m your Mom, well your biological Mom.  Your Father gave me this journal so I could write to you.  This is the first time I’ve actually written something down.  I’ve tried many times late at night when I wake up from one of my nightmares but it’s just too hard.  What do I say; I wasn’t some young girl who didn’t know what I was getting into…Maybe I should start from the beginning.  Before I was even born my Dad went to jail, when I was sixteen/seventeen he was released.  He came after me and took me from my family and your Father.  I didn’t know at the time that I was pregnant but I found out while being held captive, your Dad didn’t know about you until I remembered years later.   I thought I would lose you before you were even allowed to take your first breath but you were strong and held on.  A couple of days after I had you my Father took you away from me and because of this I suppressed my memory about you and what had happened.

I hope you don’t think I abandoned you or forgot about you because that’s not true at all.  When the police and FBI found me thirteen years later I was a mess.  I could barely function and all I wanted to do was to curl up somewhere and go to sleep, forget about everything that had happened to me.  Then I saw your Father.  His name is Alex and you’ve probably heard of him, he’s in the group the Backstreet Boys, I heard they were pretty big and still are in a lot of places. When we were younger we loved each other very much and when I saw him sitting on the edge of my bed in the hospital I could still feel his love for me.  He helped me a lot; I don’t even think he knows how much.  Your Dad showed me what it was like to love again, to be loved again, he helped me see that there was a life outside of the rooms I was held in, and when I remembered about you he showed me that there was still hope. 

Hope…I named you Nadia, although I’m sure that’s not your name now but back when you were born I named you that because it was Russian for hope.  Hope that some day someone would find us, hope that someday I’d see your Dad again, that he would see you and hope that some day I would see my family and my Mom again.  When my Father took you away I had lost all of that, in a way I lost my hope but Alex brought it back to me and I know that someday, he’ll find you, we’ll find you, and I will see you once again.  Right now we’re waiting for the FBI to come see us when we get back, I’m hoping we get some sort of time line, maybe a place to start looking.

I’m sorry I guess I’m kind of all over the place. There’s so much I wanna say.  I can’t sleep and that happens a lot, usually I’m at home some place familiar but right now your Dad and I are on our honeymoon in Italy, so I’m finding it a little hard to sleep.  I get like that when I’m some place new. I guess for now I just want you to know how much I love you and how sorry I am if any of this is hurting you.  I just want to know you’re ok.  I would love nothing more than for you to be my daughter but I do know you have a Mom, who loves you very much I’m sure, at least I hope.  You have a family already and I’ve already seen you get ripped away from one; I don’t want to see it happen to you again.  Like I told you I don’t really remember, I remember days, some weeks, I remember when you were born but I don’t remember where we were or where you went and my father wasn’t going to tell me and he didn’t tell me. So I really don’t know if you’re alive or dead right now but I choose to believe you’re alive.  I just want to know you’re ok, happy and loved.  I know I speak for your Dad when I tell you that’s all we want.  I think Alex is waking up so I better stop here, not sure what else I can say right now.  Thanks for taking the time to read this if you are, I hope I can get to know you and find out the person you’ve become but if not that’s ok too, like I said before, I’m just happy you’re ok.

Love, Chelsea (Mom)