Dear Family,

July 4, 2045

Log Entry 1

Dear Father,

I wish I could be better. I wish I could fix everything that happened to you and my own broken mind. This used to be your favorite day, you know. The Fourth of July was one of the only days when we would pretend you weren't sick and you could drink all night until the only stars you could see were the ones in your own eyes. I should have done better and not let you go off that night about how Mother left us with nothing but an empty house that just gave terrible memories of me to you. I should have said, "It's going to be okay. We will get through this together." But I was 11, and you were the adult then. Or were you?

July 10, 2045

Log Entry 2

Dear Mother,

I wish you had not ever left. It broke up our family. We shattered and were never put together again. When I think of you, I don't think of the good moments but the heart-reaching, sob story ones. Times when you told me to hide because we were to play a game. And then you forgot about me until the next day. By then, I had already gotten up to find Father asleep in the tub. You said it was his medicine. But then why could I smell liquor on his breath and find bottles of bourbon on the kitchen floor every time?

After you left, Father's "medicine" kept getting worse. I found him dead asleep with liquor on his breath more and more. By day, he was my Father who took "care" of me. But by night, I was his. All that you did was "decept and destroy the minds of the weak." Or at least that's what Father told me.

Time broke both of our hearts. At first, he told me you would return one day and fix everything, and I believed him. But as time passed, like water washing up on a beach, I went from hopeful and a child to a boy grown up too fast with anger—anger for the world.

But mostly you.

July 21, 2045

Log Entry 3

Dear Sister,

I know you were 21, just graduating college and starting a new life, but why did you not save me? I was never hurt. Or at least he didn't purposefully hurt me.

It was mostly the little things Father did, like forgetting to pick me up from school or talking about how I was like Mother. And I am nothing like that woman.

Mother was the one thing that all three of us could agree was bad. Did you know that I saw her once when I was 15? It was at one of the finals for a soccer tournament in which the school's team competed. She was in the bleachers with a man and child—not exactly what I hoped to see. But she didn't see me, so I slunk away like a coward. Do you take me for a coward, sister? Or do you not know me well enough to make that accusation?

Sister, you did nothing but everything wrong. I hope you are better than me.

August 1, 2045

Log Entry 4

Dear Father,

I have thought about it and decided that when you went away for those many months for rehab, you wanted to get better. When I was younger, I thought you did everything to escape me and the courtroom. But as it turns out, as I read in your will, it was so that you could become a better Father. Where you ever, though? I resent myself for not giving you a second chance. I used to think, "why cant you love me more?" but as time has passed, i've realized that you tried your best with all of your own crap going on. With Mother saying it's not you, it's me, about leaving us shattered.

But that's what happens when you have trust issues.

August 8, 2045

Log Entry 5

Dear myself,

I wish I didn't carry as much baggage as I do. "It's not your fault." I keep repeating those words like a mantra in my head; if I keep saying them, I will get better and forget everything that has happened in the past years.

Then I finally went through Father's things and realized he had kept all of Mother's old stuff from before she left. Of course she would leave everything from her past life. It was a lot of crap, but underneath everything, there were crowned jewels that only I would like to keep. Mother left in the dead of night, and we never heard from her again.

I wish she could have explained all the secrets and the family she hid from us, but that's what my family is and was: one big secret.

August 13th, 2045

Log entry 6

Dear sister,

Why did you never tell me about the pain that you went through in high school? I realize now that you were fighting your own battles with Mother that no one but you and her knew about. It seems like an invasion of privacy, but I read Mother's tear-stained Diary. And it clarified a few things. You knew about her leaving, and the guilt of what you knew would have been to prominate on your face to visit. You were never that good of a liar. But I was.

The day of Father's funeral was strange. I knew the secrets that were buried along with both Mother and Father.

Father's secrets were of a different type. He didn't want anyone to know he spent 500 dollars on a computer and couldn't afford groceries for the next three weeks, while Mother hid her other world. Which seems like a bigger lie?

I hope you know, sister.

August 20th, 2045

Log entry 7

Dear Mother,

I don't have words to express how I feel. You loved me, and then you left. That is one thing that you didn't ever need to do. You could have been honest and not destroyed something beautiful. Now it is nothing but a casing of something that once was. You were the constant of Father and I's life. And then you ruined it. And for what? To get the approval of another man? I hope you're happy, Mother. But if you're not, it doesn't cause me pain.

You got what was coming.

Goodbye.