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DEAR DIARY, September 7, 2009
Today will be different. I'm not going to pretend I'm fine. I will smile, and I'll say "I'm getting better, thank you."
My name is Natalia Lily Gilbert and I don't know what I am.
This is a new journal, so I guess I should introduce myself because this might become one of the other Gilbert journals one day. I'm the oldest child, technically. Miranda and Grayson adopted me when my biological parents died, Miranda's brother and sister-in-law. Elena, my little sister, is younger than me by a few months. We're both currently 17. My little brother Jeremy recently turned 15. The three of us are living with our aunt, Jenna, and have been since our parents died in May.
This past May, Elena was at a party when she got in a disagreement with her boyfriend at the time, Matt Donovan. I think so anyway, I never asked. I went for the drive with our parents Miranda and Grayson, to take her home. Dad was driving across Wickery Bridge, the next thing I know our car is plunging into the lake. I'm pretty sure mom died on impact, but dad, Elena, and I were conscious when the car was filling us with water. We were trapped in the car, I know that much. The three of us said our goodbyes and mouthed 'I love you' to each other.
I died in the backseat that day.
When we were pulled out of the water, Elena still had a heartbeat but I had been dead for almost five minutes already. Whoever pulled us out had to do CPR and ended up fracturing two of my ribs and leaving a bunch of bruises, I'm just thankful I'm still breathing. I woke up a week later in the hospital in a bed next to Elena's. Many of the hospital staff were convinced I wasn't going to wake up. It hurt to even breathe, and now I have such a fear of water I can barely make it through a shower without a panic attack.
Jeremy, my little brother, started hanging out with a new group of people and has turned to drugs. Elena is constantly writing in her journal, either locked in her room or at the graveyard. I also write in a journal, which I recently filled, just not as frequently. Mom bought her Elena and I matching one's for Christmas last year, and I'm finally getting around to using it.
I've changed too, I know I have.
After I was released from the hospital I felt like I had just been away for the past ten years. I know I haven't, but it feels different now. I desperately want to remember the place I 'had been', but I fear it isn't the time to remember that yet. I also have a mark on my arm, a triangle looking thing. I don't know what it means, or how it got there. Everyone just thought I got a tattoo. I haven't. I noticed it two days after I woke up, before I even got out of the hospital.
I've been having two different sets of dreams recently, never the same one twice. I don't remember some of them, but I'll catch myself sketching someone and know they're from one of the dreams. One of them is of a man and his family, and there is something familiar about them. I just don't know what.
