This is what happens when sleeping pills don't work like they should.

I wonder sometimes if I already missed my opportunity for happiness. You know, the I-have-everything-I-ever-wanted kind of happiness. I met him when I was in 8th grade, and I hadn't thought of him in years when I heard someone mention his name at work almost a year ago.

His name is Nick. He's married now, and I think he has a baby. And here I am, single and staying that way.

When I was 14, I wanted to be just like everyone else. I admire any teenager who doesn't feel that way. I saw the popular girls, and I wanted to be one of them. I wanted their clothes, their hairstyles, their friendships, their following. Instead, I was just an average girl, socially awkward and always at a loss for the right thing to say.

Nick liked me, though. Not the me I thought I wanted to be, but the me I was. And I liked him too. He was nice, he had sparkling blue eyes, and he was a gentleman. He stopped to talk to me whenever he had the chance.

I thought I'd have more opportunities to meet "the one." I mean, really. Who meets their soulmate in 8th grade homeroom? I wonder now if I did, if that was my only chance. He's not the type of guy to leave a wife, nor a "man" who would leave his child behind if his marriage floundered.

I remember what I said to fuck things up. I was sitting next to one of the popular girls, and she said something about Nick liking me while he was within earshot. I laughed it off, then said that I wished he would ask me out so I could just say no.

If only I could take back those words.

I'd never say anything like that now. If a guy was willing to put himself on the line to ask me out, I'd give him a chance. If I didn't like him, I'd let him know gently. I wouldn't embarrass him like I did Nick.

But I was only 14. I wanted to impress that girl so she'd invite me to sit at the popular table at lunch.

If only I could go back...

By the time I started high school, I knew that I would never belong to that clique. I didn't want to, not really. I realized that the popular crowd was no better than the rest of us. If anything, they were worse. They did everything to keep that label, sacrificing themselves often to be part of the in-crowd.

This blog is starting to sound like a bad after-school special...

I talked to Nick a few times during freshman year. I never meant to brush him aside, but he thought I did. He always seemed to catch me when I was studying, when I didn't have time to talk to him. So eventually he faded away, and that was all.

Then I heard his name, more than 5 years after we graduated. It dawned on me then that I had passed up a great guy for no good reason. I wished for another chance. Not with him, I'm not a homewrecker, but with anyone. I just wanted someone to make me feel important to them like Nick did.

I could have had a high school sweetheart. I could have gone to every dance, always had a date for the weekend. I could have lost my virginity to someone I loved because I loved him, not to some guy because I didn't want to be a virgin anymore. I could proudly state that I've only slept with one person instead of telling everyone that I never reveal the body count. We would have gotten married out of high school, and I could have gone to college while he was in the military.

My life could have been so different.

I believe that our lives are determined for us the moment we're born. There are certain things that will inevitably happen, good and bad. You can take the hard path, or you can take the easy path. You never know which is which until it's all said and done. Nick was my easy path, and I'm wondering now if going that way really would have been a good thing. I think of all the things I would have missed out on, like learning how to be completely independent. Then I think of all the things I would have had, and wonder if those would have been taken away from me. Maybe someday we would have grown apart, and I would have been lost without him. I wouldn't have known what it was like to be truly alone before he left me.

I wish I could just know what a life with him would have been like. Maybe if he had asked me to a dance, or even asked for my phone number, things could have been different. My practical mind won't let me take all the blame for this missed opportunity. My words cut deep, I'm sure, but he still talked to me after that. I hope he knows that I never meant to be so hurtful.

Nick, I want to apologize to you. It's been more than 10 years, and I still hate that I could ever say something like that. I did like you, and I would have given you a chance. I just wasn't ready then, not when I was 14. I wish I had had you throughout high school instead of the long string of assholes who only used me to get what they wanted. I deserved that for the way I hurt you. I was so careless. I know you're happy now, and I hope you stay that way. I hope your wife knows how lucky she is, and that she never takes you for granted. If I could go back to that day in homeroom, I would have brushed Courtney aside instead of you. You would have been everything I wanted, but I pushed you away. I'm sorry.

The Next Suicide

I used to have it all. I was beautiful, I was rich, and I was famous. Women envied me, men wanted me. I married the man every woman wanted, and I was happy. We were happy.

Then it was over. All of it, all at once. There should have been a crash, an explosion. But there was nothing. The fame was still there, the money. But suddenly I was 40 and alone, and the man every woman wanted was with one of those other women. I wondered what I did wrong, what I did to push him away. I hated myself for not getting pregnant, for not being able to give him the child both of us desperately wanted. She already had two children, a boy and a girl, and she was ready for a bigger family. Her fame was only illuminated by her compassion for disadvantaged children. She was a sex pistol and a saint, and she had my husband. No one mentions that she's a homewrecker, a theif.

There have been other men. I've adored them, and they have pushed me aside. I stare in the mirror for hours, trying to figure out what is so wrong with me. There are so many men in the world who would worship me, but none of them are here. None of them have tried to make me happy.

Maybe happiness just isn't possible for me.

Soon, I will fade away. I will be forgotten, a lost star. People may wonder what happened to me, but no one will notice when I'm dying alone in a decrepit nursing home. There will be no visitors, no cameras. Someday my name in the credits will be unrecognizable, and soon afterwards the movies that defined me will cease to exist. Then what happens? There will be nothing left. There will be nothing to live for, no memories to carry me through my final days.

There is only one solution. I do not want to fade away; I want to be remembered. There will be cameras, and news stories. There will be hushed whispers and bizarre conspiracies, but only I will know the truth. Only I will know that the overdose was intentional, that the drugs I swallowed won't be found in the autopsy. My name will be in the headlines for weeks, and the tragedy of my shortened life will affect so many people. They won't forget me. As this day passes each and every year, my name will be mentioned again, my last moments relived through an anchorwoman with a fake look of empathy. She'll just be reading lines, the same way I used to read lines.

But now, it's all over. I don't want to be the lonely one, I don't want to be the starlet who's past her prime. This is the only way.

Look! I'm still creative in a non-psychotic way! My bf Jake Fox agrees!

You never think it can happen to you. And then it does, and then you're lost. You wonder why the world around you doesn't stop moving after you've lost the only thing that kept you going. You stare at pictures. You stare at children playing at the park. You stare at garbage bags on the side of the highway, wondering what might be inside. You want to pull over, to look inside those bags, to find absolution. But if that is your child's beaten, broken body in that bag, you don't want to see it. You want to remember her as she was, laughing and playing in the dirt. Alive. Home. You can't think of the alternative. First a few days pass, then a few weeks. The posters disappear. There aren't any more updates in the newspaper. Your friends, your family, treat you as though you never had a child at all. And you hate them. You hate them for forgetting her. You hate them for not knowing what it's like to lose a child.

Some days, you just want a call. Dead or alive, you just want to know. The uncertainty makes each day unbearable, but the hope keeps you from giving up. What if she is dead? What would you do if you got that call today? Would you take the pictures down? Would you have a funeral? Or would you just let her slip away, knowing that whatever she suffered during the last moments of her life doesn't matter now?

And if she is alive? Then what happens? She was only 4 when she disappeared. She might remember you vaguely, dream of you every now and then. But she has a new family, another woman she calls mom. She's happy with them. If you try to take her back, it would be like making her disappear all over again.

These are the thoughts that haunt me, every moment of every day. There can be no happy ending to this story. She's been gone for 6 years today. If she's alive, she's 10 years old. If she isn't...

The thought stops there. I can't think of that, not today. I can only think of what she would look like, what kind of person she would be. Does she still like Barbies? Does she still pretend she's a princess, hiding in her castle behind the big tree in the backyard?

That was the last place I saw her. It was a beautiful spring day, two weeks after her birthday. She was wearing a blue sweater over a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans with butterflies on the pockets. She insisted on wearing her new Barbie tennis shoes even though the yard was still muddy from the rain a few days earlier. She took me by the hand and pulled me outside with her. She told me that she was the princess and I was the queen, and that we had to hide in the castle from the bad men.

I remember telling the police about her charade after she disappeared. What bad men, they asked. I didn't know. I wish I did. I thought she was only playing; could she have known what was to come? A child's intuition is an amazing thing, a gift whose significance they can never truly grasp.

We played in the castle for a long time. She served tea, using leaves as cups and a stick as a teapot. I kept thinking about the laundry that needed to be folded, the floors that needed to be vacuumed. Had I known those would be the last moments I shared with my daughter, I would have enjoyed it more. I would have forgotten about everything else and rolled in the grass with her. But I was sure that we would have a hundred more days like that, a million more moments to share.

Sometimes, I say her name aloud just to hear it. Alana. Alana. Alana Maribelle. My beautiful baby girl, my only child. I wonder now if her disappearance was my punishment for that afternoon that I sat in the waiting room of the abortion clinic, knowing that ending my pregnancy was the only solution. I was 22 when I got pregnant, but I wasn't ready to settle down. I didn't think that I could raise a child, and I didn't want to tell her father about her. I knew too many girls my age, not women, who were raising babies on their own. I couldn't do it. I wasn't strong enough.

I went into one of the sterile rooms. I sat on the cold metal table, dressed only in a paper gown. I waited for the doctor to come in, to cleanse my body of the life that had been growing inside it for 7 weeks. There was a knock on the door, and the knob began to turn.

I started sobbing. I had been mulling this decision over and over in my mind since the plus sign appeared on the home pregnancy test two weeks ago, and I was sure. This was what I had to do. But suddenly I couldn't. I knew this decision was harder, that there was no turning back. I was going to have a baby. The doctor left the room and I got dressed, still crying. I hated myself for even thinking that I could end the life inside me. I ran out the front door of that place, past a pair of protesters who yelled "murderer" at me. I didn't stop to tell them that I had changed my mind. I wanted to get far away from that place as fast as I could.

Seven months later, Alana was born. Six pounds, five ounces, 18 inches long. My angel. As I looked into that tiny, beautiful face, I couldn't believe that I had ever considered ending my pregnancy. She was everything I had been waiting for my entire life. All of my hopes and dreams revolved around this tiny girl, and she quickly became the source of all my happiness. Being a single mother was hard, but Alana made it all worthwhile. Everything I did was for her.

Before she disappeared, things had been going well for us. I had a decent job, one that didn't make me work weekends and understood if I had to leave early to pick my little girl up from daycare because she didn't feel well. I had finally bought us a little house, a two-bedroom shack that I fixed up myself and that we could call our own. Alana picked out pastel pink paint for her bedroom walls vehemently, not even considering any of the other colors I showed her. She placed her hands in the wet cement after the sidewalk in front of our house was poured. I run my fingers over those tiny handprints sometimes, wondering how big her hands are now. The picture we took the day we moved into the house still sits inside on a frame on my nightstand. I thought about moving into a bigger house, even moving to a different town. Knowing that Alana knew her address and phone number by heart kept me from leaving. Maybe someday she would get away from the demons who stole her from me, and she would be able to find her way home. That hope kept me rooted where I was, unable to move forward. Time stopped for me when I called Alana's name that afternoon and she didn't come to the house.

I called her name again, again. I grew irritated at first, thinking she was just playing a game with me when I wanted her to come in for dinner. I made her favorite, lasagna and garlic bread. I had a busy night planned; a babysitter was coming over at 7 so I could go on a date. I was nervous over my first date with a guy my friend Andrea had set me up with, and Alana's refusal to cooperate only shattered my nerves further. I yelled her name one more time, adding that she wouldn't get dessert if I had to come find her. I looked to the big tree, her castle. I saw her blue sweater lying in the grass, but my daughter wasn't there.

I searched the yard. I looked through the garage, checking any space where she might be able to hide. I yelled her name frantically, knowing in the bottom of my heart that something was terribly wrong. Neighbors came outside when they heard me yelling, and they started to yell her name too. When the streetlights came on and there was no sign of Alana, I went into the house and called the police. Dinner was sitting in pans on the stove, untouched. I called for Alana inside the house while I waited for the police to come, hoping that she had snuck inside when she heard me yelling for her. I said that if she would just come out, she wouldn't be in trouble.

She wasn't there, and I knew it. Alana never liked playing hide and seek. Even when she had done something wrong, she wouldn't hide from me. We were a team, Alana and I. I punished her when it was necessary, but she always knew that I loved her, that I forgave her. She was a good girl.

The babysitter pulled up, then the squad car. The entire neighborhood was already searching for my angel baby, yelling her name as they swept the bushes with a flashlight. I answered the policeman's questions mechanically, telling him when I had last seen Alana and what she was wearing. I felt like a failure as a mother under his gaze. I never should have let her out of my sight. I was supposed to protect her, keep her safe. And I couldn't.

Andrea came over with her husband, and Jeremy was with them. I apologized to him for missing the date, and he didn't know what to say. He looked at the picture of Alana that the policeman held, then went outside to join the search party that had formed. He told me how pretty she was, that she looked just like me. She had inherited my brown curls and green eyes. I thanked him for coming to help find my little girl.

My house became ground zero for the first two weeks after Alana disappeared. Policemen came and asked me the same questions over and over again, but they never had any new information for me. There was no hope for them to give me. The statistics said that she had probably been taken by someone I knew, and that she had more than likely been killed within hours of her disappearance. People were careful not to mention that around me, but I already knew. I had watched news stories of missing children before, and they all ended the same. But those parents still waited for their child to be returned to them safely, even after years had passed. I would do the same.

I'm sorry.

He found out about Fox today.

I talked to him after the game. He was already pissed off because he didn't do much, and he got hit by a pitch. He was sitting in the hotel with ice on his arm when he called me.

I've never wanted to be able to fly so much in my entire life. I just wanted to be there with him. I need him right now. Not just his voice. But I won't get to see him much this month. At least, not in person.

We had been talking for a little while when Jake beeped in. I switched over just to say that I'd call him back later. I don't know how Ryan figured out who Jake was calling, but he did. I called him back because he wasn't there when I tried to switch back. I knew something was seriously wrong when I heard his voice again.

"Why did Jake call you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I'll give you one chance to tell me the truth. Why did Jake call you?"

So I told him. Everything. That Wells is just a fling, and that as much as I lust for Jake, I know it won't get serious between us. And that I'm not ready to give either one of them up.

He was disappointed. That hurt the most. Then I thought that he might hate me for this, and I realized that I just can't lose him too. Not right now. He's been my rock the last few days, and I'll need him even more as the shit starts to hit the fan.

We didn't talk much longer after that. He's angry with me, I know. My apology meant nothing because he knows I won't stop what's going on with Fox and Wells just yet. But if it comes down to them or Ryan, I know what I have to do. I just wish he could understand that I'm not trying to hurt anybody. Hell, Fox and Wells both know that I'm not looking for anything serious. I just want to have fun. For once I have all the attention I've ever wanted, and I want to enjoy it for a little while. I need the distraction.

I miss Ryan already.
I wish I could put my arms around him and let him know that no matter what, he'll always mean the world to me.

Another installment of Toni and the Cubs

First and foremost: I forgave Dempster today. There won't be a reconciliation between us, but at least we can be friends. He had an amazing outing today, and I'm soooo pissed off at Gregg for fucking it up. Again.

I mean, seriously. Why take Heilman out? Hmmm? Oh well, a new series starts tomorrow.

Anyway. Talked to Theriot again last night. Have I mentioned that he's the greatest listener EVER? After everything that went down yesterday, I just needed someone to tell me that everything is going to be okay and that it's understandable for me to be pissed off. And to just sit there and listen to me cry over the phone for 10 minutes.

Once I calmed down, though, he tried to talk to me about what's going on with Wells. He said that I was just using him to make Dempster jealous, and I didn't exactly deny it. I like Wells, though. He's good people, and he's as great behind closed doors as he is on the pitcher's mound. I told Theriot that I don't know if it will last, but I'm going to see what happens.

I haven't told him about Fox yet. I know he'll be mad at me. Not just that I'm having a fling with Fox, but that I'm seeing Wells at the same time. I know I need to make a choice soon...

I was still crying when I got off the phone. I could have talked to him all night. But he was exhausted after the long game last night, and I couldn't keep him up and hinder his game today. Not that it mattered with Gregg on the mound... Yeah, I'm still mad. I haven't decided yet if I was crying because of everything that happened or because I couldn't talk to Theriot anymore. Hell, I just don't know. I think I'm just distracting myself with Fox and Wells... I know which Cub my heart really belongs to...