The warmth of sunshine beams in through the bedroom window as Arianna awakes and prepares to face the day ahead of her. But the welcoming warmth of the sunbeams is in direct contrast to the coarse coldness which she will have to soldier through in facing yet another day. She wishes she could just curl up and go back to sleep and have the peace that only it affords her.

It has been 10 years and still the pain remains. They say it goes away with time, but she thinks it has only gotten worse. You never get used to having someone who was once a part of you taken away. You only get better at putting on a poker-face and pretending and parading to the world that despite your loss, you can be just as though you've never lost anything at all.

The pain is always there, and it is the contradiction of the pain which the world around her demands that is difficult for her. The more days she makes it through successfully pretending, the more the reality of the pain is manifest in a night like last night.

She tosses and turns and fights against the warmth of the sun as she argues with herself in her mind, trying to convince herself that maybe today will be the day in which she finds something that even so much as resembles a portion of the joy which she once had. This argument works sporadically, but over time she has come to believe that maybe even it is nothing more than a fantastical wish, and on most days the logic and the evidence of this side of the argument seems to outweigh any other.

The act of getting herself up and out of bed from day-to-day has therefore become nothing more than an act of pure self-discipline, coupled with the hope that even if she will not receive of that same joy herself, perhaps she may be able to bring within that day some small semblance of it into the lives of others. -And perhaps somewhere deep, deep down in some forgotten or closed off chamber of her heart there yet remains some small seed of hope just waiting to sprout up that despite all the evidence and logic that proves otherwise, Ultimately, Love will conquer All.