It's funny how in such a short time you can change. Somethings you change because of a traumatic event or simply you just learn to grow up. Some people become better and some become worse, colder than they were before.

I don't know which category I'm in. Some say I'm cold and heartless, while some say I care too much. It depends on what period of my life you knew me. What side of my story you saw?

If you saw the news, you would think I'm a cold-hearted bitch who played a millionaire. He found out and I was screwed. Then, there is the other side about how I got played, used, and finally tossed aside like trash.

That's the real side of the story, the side that only a couple people got to know. Because no one else would care, no one else would believe it. No one wants to believe that the girl they've hated for so long had suffered so much, that they were wrong.

I think of this as I paint and I know that the painting will be beautiful. Because only art can turn something so dark and painful into something beautiful and powerful. I know it can be a multimillion-dollar painting if I sold it. But as always I won't, I never sell anything that has to deal with my past.

My darkest emotions are painted on these canvases, then I put them in a room that is always locked up. There is one person who has seen it, Francisco Daniels, Blake's brother.

It sounds crazy letting the brother of the guy who ruined me see my emotions, my past that torments me. But Francisco, or France as I call him, was there. Half of the past that torments me, he has seen. He lived through some of those events. He was there. There is no one else I trust more than him.

He could have told his brother what he had seen me go through. He had no obligations to me. He had every right to tell his brother because they were family. We weren't, but he never did.

Instead of running to his brother, he ran towards me and saved me. He saved me more times than I can count, emotionally and physically. So we might not be related by blood, but we are family.

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As I think of France I get another canvas and paint another picture. Something brighter, another multimillion-dollar painting but I won't sell it either. Not because it has to deal with my past, but because it's a memory that I don't want to share with the world.

It's the day that France brought me to the beach with him after I was released from the hospital. Or as he says, the second time I tried to kill myself. Most would think: how can a time where a person tried to kill themselves lead to a happy memory. Well, France can make the impossible happen.

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I was laying in the hospital bed trying to figure out how I'm alive. But I already know how, France. I think he has a superpower he hasn't told me about, the power would be knowing when I tried to kill myself.

The doctor said he brought me to the hospital just in time. That he saved me in the knick of time. It pissed me off. It isn't his life to save. Everyone would be so much better off without me.

As I was putting on my clothes to leave the hospital, I heard a knock on the door.

"Elizabeth I know your changing, while you're at it put this on," he said opening the door wide enough to toss me a bag. "Put it one. We're going somewhere."

"If I don't, what are you going to do? Put it on me!" I asked getting frustrated. Just because he saved me doesn't give him the right to order me around.

France scoffed, "Yes, don't forget where we met. You have no problem undressing in front of people, so don't act like you do now."

I didn't say anything else as I knew that he was right, so I picked up the bag from the floor and opened it. To my surprise, it was a bikini. I put it on because I knew that if I didn't he would seriously put it on for me. And I wouldn't be happy about that and neither would his wife be.

I walked out the door looking for Francisco, but he wasn't there. So I walked out the main doors thinking he left or was filling out paperwork, and I would be able to leave without him and go home. But no he was waiting for me in his car, wearing his ray-bans sunglasses.

Let me tell you, I need a pair of ray-bans.

"Get in the car now. I don't have time to waste with you standing there."

I knew I would have to get in the car one way or another. So I thought I would have a little fun. See Francisco was driving a Porsche 918 Spyder and I always wanted to drive it. Let's see if he will let me.

" I'll get in...."

"Then, do it. Don't just stand there" he said taking off his sunglasses to look at me.

"You didn't let me finish. If you let me wear your ray-bans"

"Sure, here" be handed me the glasses"

"Again you didn't let me finish," I said grabbing the glasses and putting them on, "I want to drive the car"

"Hell no! Jenny would kill me if anything happened to her car. "

So, I called his wife Jenny to ask her. As always she is on my side, girl power, and she says I can.

"You lose France, Jenny said yes."

He cursed under his breath but handed me the keys.

********************************

That is one of my favorite memories, but that wasn't my favorite from that day on the beach.

It was the one I was painting, France hugging me from the back and swinging me around by the ocean.

I remember feeling carefree and childish joy. How we splashed each other with water and threw sand at one another. How we looked at the clouds and found different pictures In them. How he smiled and his eyes shined when he told me about his wife and their two boys.

It gave me hope, that life could be better. That it wasn't always painful and that maybe someday I could be as happy as France was. It was the day I decided that I was going to live. Although I already decided that before, I knew that this time it was different.

I wasn't doing it for France or anyone else. I was going to live for myself.