Her mother was my 'friend' for a year or so. I met her visiting another friend on my 17th birthday. By that next year, Shyann had arrived (I was literally in the other room when she was conceived we always joked), and by the time I realized that her mother had no soul, I had that baby. From the time she was six days old, I'd have her for days and days. I taught her to tie her shoes. I took her to have her ears pierced. I taught her how to take care of herself, how to buy fruit in the grocery store, I took her to church and answered her questions. I trummed her hair. I bought her school supplies, went to meetings with her daycare, took her to doctors appointments after she got sick. I did all the 'mother' stuff. She was nothing but a nuisance to her mother from the time she was little.

Contact was totally severed for years, and then out of the blue, her mother called me just before Thanksgiving 2006, saying that Shyann had been asking for years to talk to me, and I talked to Shyann twice. I was totally unprepared to sort through all of that. I was glad to talk to her -- it soothed my heart some to know she was healthy, but saddened me too to know that her life wasn't what it was going to be. They didn't follow through with their promise to keep her in gymnastics, which was her love. Even when she was so sick, she would just want to be there in the gym, even if she couldn't do anything. We sorted through a LOT of emotional demons through gymnastics (she started trainig to compete again after she was considered in complete remission, right after she turned 8, up to 20 hours a week). I was in the midst of my own several month long depression, and just was not in any shape to deal with that emotional baggage.

I still have their phone number. I've thought about calling. But I knew I couldn't deal most of the time in the past year and a half with opening that can of worms. I've had enough to deal with, and I didn't feel it was safe.

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