Letters to Emma

16th July 2016

Dearest Emma,

Though you are not with us does not mean we forget about you, these letters contain everything I would have said to you. I don't know how often I will write, but I want to get everything down so you know that both your father and I loved you and still will always love you no matter where you are and though we can't tell you this in person, as you get older we will always be with you in spirit.

Know that we both love you. You were our miracle. I plan to tell you everything about our lives, the lives of your family and what each person means to us, and would have meant to you. Everyone was so excited about having you in our lives, but for some reason that was not to be. We all know that you watch over us and we feel your love for us, especially your father and me. So, before I continue to cry some more over not having you here with me right now, let me tell you about your father and myself. Let me tell you about me.

My name is Isabella Marie Cullen formally known as Isabella Marie Swan. I am 33 years old and married to your wonderful father Edward Anthony Masen Cullen. My parents are Renee and Charlie Swan, they were high school sweethearts in a small town of Forks. They married right after graduating high school and a year later had me, the cherry in their eyes. Being young they really didn't know or understand what it would be like to be married and have a baby at such a young age. Sadly they divorced by the time I was 3 years old, with me their only child. My mother Renee moved from place to place for several years until she meet the love of her life, or so she thought. Phil Dywer, a minor-league baseball player. He was younger than her and made her feel young and special. They married quickly and moved to sunny Jacksonville, where I finally had a stable home environment to grow up in.

The trouble with Phil he was not a nice man and was very abusive to me and Renee, in many ways. Renee was blind in the beginning to his ways and always had an excuse for his behaviours, saying that he was a good step -father for taking me in.

Over the years, the contact with Charlie became less and less, and I started to believe the things Phil was saying and doing to me. I believed I deserved them. As I grew up into a young woman the abuse became worse, to the point where I really did not know who I was and felt I deserved no better. At school, I was a straight A student. Never in trouble, but I had no friends. No one to share my concerns with, or even know what a normal teenage life was like.

For my 17th birthday Renee and Phil sat me down and told me they were going on the road, as Phil had been drafted for a major-league baseball team. So, I suggest I move in with my dad Charlie. Three weeks later I was on a plane to dreary Forks, the one place I had only ever heard negative things about from my mother. Since I didn't remember any of it I could only take her word for it.

A week before I was to start my senior year at Forks High School, Charlie picked me up from Sea Tac Airport with all my belongings in three bags most of which were filled with books. See I have an obsessive passion for the classics, I have read them all and love the tales they tell. My favourite being Wuthering Heights, I can't tell you how many times I have read that book.

Charlie, as I called him, since I didn't really know him, wanted me to feel at home. He felt I would be embarrassed to be chauffeured around in a Police Cruiser, was the Police Chief of that small town of Forks, so he purchased for me an old Chevy felt Truck. I just loved that truck until it died of old age.

During the time that I lived with Charlie, until I graduated, we became close and I could not have asked for a better dad. He kept to himself most of the time, but could see I was broken but with unconditional love and understanding he finally got out of me why I was broken. I of course blamed all the abuse on myself, saying I deserved it, that I asked for it. But Charlie stood his ground gently with me, listened to everything I had to say, encouraging me to talk and cry it all out. Charlie was beyond pissed at Renee for ever allowing it to happen to me, their daughter, and promised me that I would never have to have anything to do with either of them again.

During the year, I lived with Charlie, I felt I needed to earn extra money. I found the best part- time job I could in a little bookstore in town. I just loved it! I could spend my free time reading all the books I could get my hands-on. Delving into some of the best written classics and current novels I was in heaven. I knew what I wanted to do when I graduated. I wanted to be a writer.

I got a full scholarship to a college in Seattle, but Charlie was shot in the line of duty just before I was about to head off and become an adult, a woman. There was no way now I was going to move so far away from him when I had almost lost him. I just couldn't! So instead I enrolled in basic courses at Port Angeles Community College, whilst still working at the bookstore. I spent my summer that year taking care of Charlie and making every second I had with him count. I was not going to miss a thing.

Your grandfather Charlie was like a bear with a sore head as he recovered from his injuries, always telling me I should go off to College and live my life, but like him I am stubborn to a fault! I would not move out.

So, I spent the next few years working and attending community college, studying everything I could get my hands on about creative writing and how I could become an author. My teachers said I had an aptitude for writing and my talents were being wasted at a small College, but I just wouldn't move away from Charlie. He needed me and I needed him, the only parent to every show me real parental love.

As time went on Charlie encouraged me to seek out a therapist to help me deal with what I had been through with Renee and Phil. Again, I was stubborn saying I didn't need help, I was doing fine on my own. But Charlie was right. I did not have a social life nor had I ever had a healthy relationship with a man, I needed help and finally after two years of putting it off I saw my first therapist. She was amazing, letting me talk about anything and everything I was comfortable talking about, till finally I started to talk about Renee and what had happened. It took many years with her to get me to the point where although still so shy and awkward I started to make friends and have a social life outside of Charlie. But I never really got close to any of them, because I couldn't trust anyone - not after what I had been through. I was not going down that road again.

I had a few boyfriends as time when on, but nothing serious, no man was ever going to hurt me the way Phil had done. But deep within me I always wanted a husband that would love me and my children. God, I loved children and had always wanted to be a mother, but I could never trust a man with my heart, I could never return to being broken again like I had been. I had worked too hard to become a normal healthy woman, admittedly I still had a few mental health problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar, but I was healthy and a strong woman who just couldn't live on her own.

Then one day I finally moved out of Charlie's and moved to a small apartment in Port Angels. A friend I had made in Collage showed me online chat rooms where you could talk with people from all around the world without anyone knowing who you really were. I was hooked! So, I bought a cheap laptop, got the internet hooked up and I was set.

Between working full- time, studying part-time, finishing up at College I was online every second I could get. Being able to talk in different chat rooms from locals to people around the world, my confidence grew. I could hold conversations with people I did not know and they did not know the real me. I became sarcastic and funny, saying things that shocked people. It was not the real me but who I wanted to be and I loved it.

As time went on I started to talk with a few people personally. I never told them my personal history but gave them enough to get to know me and finally I agreed to meet a few offline and in person. The first few meetings were good for me. It got me to make a few real friends. Though there were some bad meetings, and I ended up with a few stalkers both online and in person, which was scary.

As time went on I met this man in a chatroom that I met in regularly. He was kind and funny; we got along really well. His tag name was Green-Eyes. I would later discover he had the most amazing emerald green eyes that I just fell in love with from the moment I met him.

After several months of chatting online we decided to meet on his 21st birthday at a club. Since I didn't feel comfortable meeting him in such a large group of people I didn't know, I took a friend with me that knew some of the others attending the get-together.

I was nervous to meet him. I had to travel to Seattle for the weekend and meet at the club we had all agreed to meet at. When I met Green Eyes, I realised that this was the man I had been dreaming about for years, just seeing his piercing eyes in my dreams. I realised, as time went on, that the reason I dreamt about him was so that when I would get to meet Green- eyes I would know that he was to become the love of my life. The one true person I could be myself with. The real me. And know that he would always stand by my side. I learnt that Green- Eyes' name was Edward Cullen and I was running scared, scare of what this man could mean to me. To my future, would I lose myself again, could I trust this mane with my heart, mind, body and soul

Dear Emma

I will leave you with this for now and my next letter I will talk about your father's life

Love always and forever Mum

Isabella Cullen