A 7-year old girl, remaining nameless, has gone missing, and is desperately wanted back by her family. The girl that could recite the Red Sox starting line-up and the commuter rail stops, the girl who so badly wanted a flower garden in a world of vegetable patches with good grades and a heart of gold has reportedly been missing for approximately 10 years. “She named her first bear Casey, loved pasta with cheese and never complained a day in her life. As she counted down the minutes left to her birthday, we took our beautiful first grader to her bedroom for the last night of being 6.” says her mother with a look of devastation on her face and a forced, tired demeanor. “The next morning we looked in her room and suddenly, our toothless smiling girl was replaced with a lost adolescent with tears in her eyes and a curve of confusion filling her face." her mother reports “I remember holding my baby in my arms, and she is nowhere to be found.” After much contemplation, the family then realized that the young adult that consumed the bedroom consisting of pink walls and butterflies along her canopy bed set was the same Andrea that they had once held in their arms, just taking on a different look as she grew up. It is a heartbreaking story of a girl growing up too quickly emotionally.

  As the story goes, she was always a happy young lady with much to say and a smile on her face. With a heart of kindness and a look of love filling her eyes, she could cheer anyone up with just about anything she could come up with in her bag of tricks, from a witty phrase or advice from a kindergartener. On her 7th birthday, the girl was preparing for school by packing up cupcakes she had made with her mother the night before. She was ready to face the day by passing the pastries out, when suddenly there was a change in plans that altered the rest of the young girl’s life. Her younger sister had accidentally pulled a TV on her in an attempt to turn the screen, crushing and fracturing her right leg.

the girl’s attention went from the girl and her cupcakes straight to her sister and her injury, as any good parent’s attention would shift. Unfortunately for the girl, her special day consisting of cupcakes and presents turned into day one of the rest of her life in which her parents had to focus on her sister and her “bull in a China shop” affect that could lead to many more dangerous episodes. The shared focal point between the girl and her sister had quickly moved more toward her sister naturally, as she could injure herself more frequently with her newly diagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).

In the girl's journal dating back in May of 2004, she writes that “Mommy and Daddy didn’t know how sad I was when my sister broke her leg.” Caring more for others than herself, the girl had no indication as to how this one event would change the rest of her life. Her feelings began to become “pushed under the rug” as one might phrase it, and from then on Andrea told very few people, if any, how things made her feel.

Fast forwarding to the present, the girl has been found underneath layers upon layers of a masked happy teenager. This “mask” may be found in your child as well; signs may include painting a smile on one’s face, mental breakdowns when not in public and thinking negatively about various types of situations. No one can detect exactly when this mask is being put on, but when it does it quite often leads to danger toward the individual. The girl described previously, the girl seen on the posters is still in there somewhere; she is simply hidden underneath the teenage layers that she has created for herself. To clear the air, she is still existent, however trapped within a teenage girl’s body. Many rumors have been spread as to where the 7 year old girl went, but this article is to make everyone aware that their old selves found in their baby pictures are still within us all somewhere, and true strength is found in the moments in which we bring ourselves out of our grown up shell.

As of that spring morning, their lives will never be the same.