As of today, Sara is officially back from hiatus! whee! Sara finally is ready to come back out and play. Thank God, because I was getting worried there for a while. I have two prompts I'll be typing up after class today that I already have written.

Thank God for getting my muse back. I was getting sad there.

Ugh okay, even with this season in full swing, Sara just REFUSES to come out and play. I am putting her on a bit of a hiatus, but she WILL *shakes fist* be back by March, I swear it. Once I get into the swing of things with school, I expect a lot more time for muse-ness once everything is juggled.

Okay. Hopefully Sara will come back and play *meep*

When I look at that picture, I am reminded of that whole mentality of the 'light at the end of the tunnel', that when you are at your darkest times, you can look ahead and find that shining light that shows you the end, the light that will help you pull through and make it to the other side.

I have to admit that I've not always seen that light. It shouldn't be in the nature of a doctor to feel the need to cut her losses and put her own life at risk. I knew that when I injected myself once again after so many years that I could have easily ended my life - and nearly did. But the heartache, coupled with liquid courage as they say - dulled that fear so it was nonexistant. For me, as far as I could tell, there was no light for me. My job was gone, the man I ... well, Michael was gone and with him all of those feelings I had tried to deny myself for so long. I couldn't turn to my father, he would see it as a final disappointment that he just couldn't be bothered with. My job was literally what I lived to do for years of my life. It was what I could cling to when the rest of the world fell apart because it was what I was good at. It was something that I knew I could do and do well, something that made sense when nothing else did.

The light at the end of that very long tunnel came in the hospital in the form of a folded paper bird. The light that I didn't yet understand, or maybe more importantly didn't want to understand yet. There's a plan to make this right was the tiny flicker of light at the end of the dark tunnel I have been in, followed by numbers I didn't yet understand. As the pieces fell more into place, the light grew bigger, until it finally became something I was running towards. I have nothing else.

My path isn't nearly finished yet, my tunnel just seems to be getting longer with each step I take, but at least this time I am running toward something, rather than away from everything.

Sara had recieved the message from her lawyer the day before to meet her at the coffee shop just a few blocks from her place. After first meeting with Stacy a month ago, she had gone through what it would take to get her medical license back. She knew it would take a lot, but she didn't realize how much paperwork would be involved. After mandatory drug tests every week to be done under close scrutiny at a clinic, she was cleared on that end, plus she had copied her paperwork from her NA meetings to give to Stacy today. It was a long road ahead, but she was determined to do it. She had spoken with the warden at Fox River the week before and had an interview just yesterday. He seemed impressed with her references, and incredibly understanding about her past problem with her addiction. He had simply put his big burly hand over hers and given her a comforting smile before quoting a psalm and telling her that everyone makes mistakes. It was now more clear to her than ever that Fox River would be the right fit for her, once she got her license back.

Walking into the coffee shop, she looked around and found Stacy sitting at a table waiting for her. She smiled and gave a small wave before making her way over to her. "Hi, sorry I'm a little late, traffic was hellish." She smiled and reached out to shake Stacy's hand before sitting down.

Who in your life, be that someone you once knew or someone you know now, means the most to you?

My mother.

Is it weird that though she died years ago, I still sometimes pick up the phone to call her? Because I do. My mom, as dorky as it might sound, was my best friend. You know how sometimes kids take sides when their parents marriage is on the rocks? I took my mom's, easily. My dad was never around, and I'm only now learning to trust him enough to depend on him.

But this isn't about my dad.

One of the best memories of her is when I was seven. My mom was drinking, even back then, and I can barely remember the early years of my life when she didn't find solace in the bottom of a bottle. When dad was out at work or wherever he'd run off to, my mom would come and wake me up in the middle of the night. She wasn't a sluggish drunk, she wasn't a mean drunk, she was just a crazy drunk. At the age of seven, I thought she was the most fun mother on the face of planet earth. Anyway, she'd burst through the door to my bedroom, a mischevious grin on her face. Still groggy, I'd climb out of bed and follow her wherever she wanted.

The particular night, she ran in and wrapped her arms tightly around me, a huge grin plastered on her face. I was barely awake as she gently shook me awake. When I asked what she wanted, she simply wrapped the blanket around me and shuffled me outside. It was the first snow of the season. We must have stayed outside for hours, collecting snow and having a big snowball fight, finishing off the evening with snow angels and numb fingers and noses. We stayed up for hours after that, she made hot cocoa [which in retrospect I think I remember her simply filling her mug with something else] and she let me stay home from school the next morning.

My mom had her faults, a lot of them, but she was in fact a good mother. Not a day goes by that I don't miss her.

[ooc: some liberties were taken, since we don't know too much about Sara's mother]

x Sara Tancredi

I hide a lot from the outside world. Outside being anyone other than myself, my family. I don't go around advertising my past with drugs. I can't live like that, always looking back, letting my mistakes run my life. I have to look ahead, look to whatever future I'll have.

In Fox River, I hid my feelings for Michael as best as I could. Aside from being insanely attracted to him, moreso than I should have allowed myself, I hid them from my co-workers, from him as well as I could [though I know I didn't do a good job of it], and I think I even tried really hard to hide it from myself. I was so confused and it was wrong, I know, but that doesn't change what it was...what it is.

My father's political life is about keeping the distasteful aspects of our lives out of the public eye. It was always career first, family second. I got used to everything I may have done wrong being swept under a big metaphorical rug, and along with that came the resentment towards my father. I'm trying to let that go. Make amends. All of that to clean up my life.

Now I find myself hiding each piece of a puzzle I can't seem to figure out inside of my AA book. I noticed the other day that I had stuck the three cranes in the "Safe Haven" chapter of the book. I wonder if I subconciously left them there or just did it absentmindedly. I can't help but have the slightest hope that it means something.

So what am I hiding now? I am trying to keep all secrets and lies out of my life, to start fresh with a life after a mistake that nearly ended my life. I think if I'm being completely honest, I'm hiding that throughout everything, I still care about him more than I should.

x Sara Tancredi

When it comes to believing in second chances, I have to think how can I not? I've gotten my fair share. No, far more than my fair share.

I think that my most significant second chances came with my addiction. I was...I am an addict. It's still so weird to say. When you're growing up, it seems infathomable that when you get older you'll become anything but what you dream of, much less an addict. I can't even pin down how I fell so far into that trap of addiction so quickly, but I did.

My first really significant second chance came when I saw that boy...that poor young thing get hit by a car. And I could do nothing to save him. I simply stood there, hearing the muffled sounds of the people begging me, the doctor, to do something. Talk about a rude awakening...and maybe I'm not the reason that boy died, but had I been of clear mind, I could have helped him live. That experience shocked me sober, so to speak, and I went on the long road to recovery. I used to say that I wanted to help people to get from being an addict to recovery, but I've found out recently, you can never truely be recovered from addiction. That call is always there, you just have to find the strength to fight it, or ignore it, whichever works best for you.

I could have died merely a week ago. By all accounts, I should have died. I pumped the lethal drug into my veins and just wanted everything in my head to stop. All the thoughts and feelings. I wanted to feel numb to it, and I went right back to the way I used to do that. I should have known that the same drug dose I used to use back then was too much. My body no longer had a tolerance for the morphine. Had I not been drinking, maybe I wouldn't have overdosed, but then if I hadn't been drinking, maybe I wouldn't have taken the drugs in the first place. So now I am running on the last of second chances I'll hopefully...no, the last second chance in that respect I will ever need. I'm not going back to that place again, I can't.

I've been thinking a lot about making amends lately, about forgiveness, both giving and receiving it. If I was given so many second chances...if I was given the chance to start over, to make myself better...wouldn't it be incredibly hypocritical of me not to give that same chance to those around me? Those I care about?

I've taken the first steps with my father. And to my surprise he was actually there for me, I know when he's lying, when he's saying exactly what I want to hear...and the eyes of my father in my apartment just yesterday were not those of the judgemental, high and mighty man I know. They were the eyes of my father. Someone I've actually missed. I've taken the first steps toward giving one person who needs it a second chance...now I just have to decide if I can do the same for someone else.

My thoughts? I'd like to think people can make monogamy work. The idealist in me might hope that every marriage has a monogamy guarantee on it, but in my experience of the world, I haven't seen it.

My father had his affairs. I knew it, my mother knew it, but we never said a word. Every night that my father wouldn't come home with the excuse of "working late" my mother would simply give me her bravest smile and pour herself another glass of wine. My mother died a broken woman, and I can't help but blame my father for that. When you marry someone, you commit to them, and only them. At least in my view of the matter. Commitment is a two way street, and if one person doesn't honor that, the other is left to their own resources.

As far as my love life has gone, well I've never been married. I've had relationships, most of them destructive or enabling at best. I honestly don't know if a monogamous marriage is possible, but I'd like to think so. I don't honestly know if I've ever been completely, honestly in love with another person. I've had relationships that felt a lot like it, but there was always something off. Mostly the drugs in that period of my life, or the mentality that I could fix whatever problem there was by myself in relationships before that. I have had one experience, I don't think you could really call it a relationship, that felt more real than anything else I'd felt previously. That turned out to all be a lie. At least from his end. And at least I think. Now is just an incredibly confusing time where my "love life" is concerned.

So my thoughts on monogamy? I would hope and pray it would be there for me. That I can find that one person I'm going to be with for the rest of my life, that we could be and remain faithful to one another through everything...but I don't know. I have a feeling that I let the only chance I may have had at that go out the window, so to speak.

x Sara Tancredi

Sara sighed, rubbing her eyes before staring down at the book in her hands, the letters that had been a little fuzzy becoming a bit more clear. She wanted to finish this chapter by the time she fell asleep. Tapping her pencil against the page, she circled a quote that she had read countless times before.

"Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn't be life."

She paused, her fingers sliding along the pages until she came to the slight part near the back. Glancing toward the door, she slid her fingers inside the book and pulled out the small paper crane. She still had the flower. Tucked away in her apartment. As much as she hated to admit it...she missed him. The words written on the wing of the white bird had put a dent in the armor she had thought she'd placed around herself. She had been so convinced that he didn't care...that she was alone in the world. But then those words seemed to call to her. There's a plan to make all this right.

She jumped slightly when she heard a knock at the door and a nurse she'd seen the night before poked her head in.

Ms. Tancredi, you have a visitor.

"Okay." She replied with a nod, slipping the bird back between the pages and carefully placing the book on the nightstand beside her.

[locked from law officials and Fox River employees]

Seven other men got out you know.

Seven. The FBI agent who's name I never got rambled off names, and the faces flashed through my mind. These men weren't like Michael...they weren't like Lincoln. These men did the crimes they were convicted of. They were criminals, and a few of the worst kind. Sucre, Tweener, C-Note, as they are called - these men barely had a few years left on their bid...and yet they broke out, for what reason? Then there were the others. The ones who were murderers...rapists...some murdered children without a second thought.

I opened the door. Yes, there you have it. I left the door unlocked. I didn't do it for Michael. I did it for Lincoln. No one deserves to die like that, especially for a crime they did not commit. Michael may not have cared...but I really do believe Lincoln was the innocent in all of this. Michael did what he did to save his brother's life. I can't say that in the same situation I wouldn't have done the same for someone I love. My family wasn't one filled with love. I never had someone I could count on, I never had someone who I felt I could lie down my life for without another thought. I don't know what that would be like, but I can only imagine.

So knowing what I know now, would I have still done it? Honestly, I think I would. I feel betrayed, I feel hurt and I hate being lied to...but through everything, I know it was the right thing to do...I just wish I had known all the facts first. But now I've become the thing I fought Michael on from day one. I have resigned to lies, to hiding truths, to betraying people I care about in order to do the right thing. Honestly, I don't even know what that is anymore.

x Sara Tancredi

I wish I could sit here and tell you my most powerful memory was some happy moment from my childhood. Or the day I passed my MCATs. The day I got clean after my addiction to morphine. I wish I could even say something as simple as the day my mother died. I remember all those things so well...but those are not the flashes of memory that brought me out of my coma.

[locked from Fox River employees and law officials.]

As cliche as it may sound, I felt like my life came alive when I met Michael. I denied it so much, and as long as I could, but when it all came down to it - I fell for him. I fell harder for him than anyone else I ever had. That scared the shit out of me, to be honest. It was wrong, I knew that - and when he kissed me...when we kissed, I didn't think. I couldn't think. I think that if either of us had a rational thought at that moment, it wouldn't have happened. Even in retrospect, I'm glad it did. I can't believe I just admitted that. I need to continue reading my AA book...

So my most powerful memory? One that more times than not, I wish I could wipe away. I can't pinpoint it down to one specific moment, but I think my most powerful memory is Michael. I hate how that sounds. I really do, but I can't afford to lie to myself. I'm already in enough trouble as it is. I didn't think he cared...I was a pawn in his elaborate scheme of things...but then there's the crane, the folded piece of paper I have hidden between the pages of my book. The one I can't stop taking out and staring at. There is a plan to make all this right. Maybe I don't want to wash away my memories of Michael after all.[/unlock]

x Sara Tancredi
x Prison Break
x 343 words

I think every little girl at some point wonders who she's going to be when she grows up. What kind of wife she'd make, what kind of mother...

When I was really little I would look up to my mom and dad, I never really thought about marriage. Who does when they are that little? I remember wanting to be a princess or a ballerina, but those dreams faded quickly as I grew older. I never thought about how my parents got together, whether or not they loved each other. They were mom and dad, and as far as I knew, their lives revolved around me. I just knew that "mommy and daddy" yelled a lot when I would fall asleep.

When I grew older I think that my views on marriage and love became more and more jaded. When I was a teenager I of course thought I knew all there was to know about love. I was sure my parents just got things wrong, and that was why they couldn't love each other anymore, why they couldn't stay together. I was ready to prove that I could get things right. When you're a teenager, you don't know anything. My dreams of being a wife, and eventual mother began to take the shape of something far less romantic, and something of a goal. I just didn't want to become my mother. And I didn't want to marry someone like my father. My ideal marriage became something that would work, and not something that was an inevitably going to fall apart. I wanted to prove to myself that whenever I found who it would be that I would marry, I wouldn't end up like my parents.

Then there was that time in my life where I didn't think to the future at all. I didn't think of love or marriage. I just thought of instant gratification. I thought of getting through the day to my next fix. None of the guys I was with then loved me. And though I may have tried to say I loved them, I didn't. Not in the least bit. I was becoming the person I didn't want to be. My mother. Only in a far more dangerous form.

Now when I think of marriage...I honestly don't know if I'll ever get there. Sometimes I think I guard myself too much...and then there are times when I don't guard myself well enough. The future is a big open place that I can't visualize as well as I'd like to. I guess I'd like to think that someday I'll get married, that someday I'll find that person I was meant to be with...but sometimes in my darkest thoughts, I have the feeling he's already come my way...and I let him escape.

x Sara Tancredi

There have been many times in my life that I have been scared. Fear is a real thing, and while I would like to think I can conquer it, the truth is, it is never that simple. You always need saving from fear, and sometimes there is no savior around.

When I was little, I was one of the kids who swore there were monsters in the closet. The monsters in my closet weren't real, but the one outside my room was. When my parents were together, I can't remember a single night when I didn't fall asleep to their yelling. Mom was drinking, dad was absent. When I would cry about the monsters, dad would go off, grumbling about this or that, while my mother would come in and cradle me in her arms, reassuring me that the monsters weren't real. She'd sing until I fell asleep. She was my savior then. Everything was safe in the world when she was there. I grew up, I got over the monster in the closet mentality. When my mom died fears were real again. I began to fear losing anyone I got close to. All I had in the world was my father, and truth be told, I didn't even really have him to count on.

The time when I medicated myself more than my patients was a time when I was blissfully unafraid of anything. I could take on the world and still have the stamina to take on another shift. Morphine calmed everything in my body, and almost claimed my life more than once. The day came that I couldn't save that poor boy. He was lying on the ground in front of me, and suddenly the world seemed like this huge weight on my shoulders. I couldn't think of any training, I didn't even have the presence of mind to do basic CPR. I wasn't the reason that boy died, but I was the reason he didn't live. The panic that took over then was the most real thing I'd felt in months. I suddenly gained the scariest clarity of my life. And then I had to save myself.

When I think of a time I have been most scared in my life, one particular time comes to mind. It was just this past year in Fox River. It had been a day like any other, incredibly hot, but nothing out of the ordinary. The Air Conditioning went out. Lockdown. A riot broke out. I was alone in the sick bay with men twice my size. I don't think I've ever been that terrified in my entire life. I was locked in a room, they were breaking through the windows. I couldn't fight them all off, and I was trapped. Then I felt a hand grab my shoulder. Fear rose painfully until I looked up into the piercing blue eyes of Michael Scofield. I had no reason to trust him...but I did. He risked everything to save my life. I didn't know the full extent of what he risked until now. Fox River is a scary place, but I had always used 'mind over matter' when it came to the realization of the dangers of that place. That day my mind was so jumbled that there was no hole for my fear to hide. Michael saw me when I was most vulnerable to fear, to danger...and he tried to make it better. He was my savior then. It was okay for me to be afraid, because he wouldn't hurt me, he wouldn't use that against me.

He saved my life, he saved me from fear...it was only right that I returned the favor.

x Sara Tancredi
x Prison Break
x 613 words

[locked from all Fox River employees, law officials, etc]

I can't help but wonder what would have happened had I not left the door open? Would I still have felt the desperate need to get away? To just simply stop feeling? Surely that guilt would hurt a lot more than the one I feel for betraying those I work for, doing something wrong...I would have let Michael down. He would have been caught. He would have been put in solitary, another ten years [at least] added to his sentence. As for Lincoln...the innocent man would be put to death. That is a far heavier thing to weigh on a consience than letting a group of convicts out.

I decided to leave it open. Against better judgement, I let Michael Scofield walk out the door of the prison, and out of my life. If I am being completely honest with myself, the pain of probably never seeing him again might be more than that of doing the conventionally "wrong" thing. I'm hurt by his decision. I feel used, like a simple puzzle piece of his plan that he could cast aside just as easily as anything else. I let my guard down with him. Against what I knew I should do, I trusted him. He saved my life, for God's sake. Why did he do that? It isn't like he really needed me. He needed the room. He could get into the infirmary with any other doctor. That doctor may not even suspect when their keys went missing.

The chief at the hospital I used to work at told me I have a Messianic complex. That each patient that came in through the door was just someone I had to help. I remember losing my first patient. I cried for an hour. It was the most unprofessional thing to do, but there it was. I was still just an intern, but when I looked at the man, dead on the table in front of me, my mind went to his family. In his wallet had been a picture of twin girls. I couldn't help but feel blame that I hadn't been able to save their father. The same goes with relationships I've had. I tend to find guys with problems and take on their problems as my own. I don't mean to, it just is the way I am. I think I have to save them, that if I can just do one thing right, the people around me can be changed for the better.

I felt the same about Michael. I felt he was the one person I could get to. The one person who actually might listen to me and change for the better. But that wasn't part of his plan. So what if I didn't leave the infirmary door open for him?

That would have been one more person that I couldn't save.

Sara Tancredi
[475 words]

Sometimes I feel like a broken record. Truth be told maybe the thing that most effected me, and who I am today is the death of my mother. Her death gutted me like I didn't expect. I couldn't turn to my father, he was too busy pushing his own agenda to really even care. He showed up at the funeral, probably to up himself in the polls. It made him seem like a devoted father, being there for his daughter. The truth of the matter is he barely said two words for me. I was my mother's daughter, that much he knew.

I think her death set forth a bit of a ripple effect with me. I was close to my mom, despite her drinking, we had a good relationship, and far better than the one I have with my father. When she died I threw myself into my work at the hospital, if I ever slept, it was on the couch in the break room. The Chief Resident kept telling me to go home, take a breather, but with the smile I was so used to forcing, I told him I was perfectly fine. I could be quite a convincing liar in my time...which maybe is why it is so hard for me to tolerate lies today.

The road of addiction is an incredibly slippery slope. Especially when there has been substance abuse history in your family. I kept telling myself that I wasn't my mother. I wasn't going to drink myself to death, and I certainly wasn't going to use morphine enough to become addicted. No, just once or twice to take the edge off, to keep me calm and focused while I did my work. Focused is not a word that should be in the same sentence as morphine.

I wasted two years of my life to that addiction. The change came when I was unable to help a boy who had been hit by a car. Is it my fault that he died? No, but it is my fault that he didn't even have a chance to live. Had I been of clear mind, I would have been able to help him. But I wasn't. That was a big turn around for me. I realized only then what kind of a path I had taken. I'll never forget that all too sober feeling of standing there, watching the crowd stare at me as if I'd been the one who hit him. I could do nothing but stand there and stare, helpless. That is not a feeling I want again.

I've been clean for two and a half years, and while I don't go around publicly announcing my past, I really do think it has shaped the person I have become. Was it a good thing? No, certainly not. But it definitely was something I learned from, something I have grown from, and hopefully, a place I will never feel the need to revisit.

x Sara Tancredi

[note: this is, obviously prior to the season finale time-wise]

I wish I could say what comfort is. I don't really remember the last time I was entirely happy, or even comfortable where I am or even in my own skin. I've found peace since my addiction. I've found clarity, and that I suppose is comfortable. Since coming clean I've never been in a relationship. I tend to go after the guys who will pull me down the wrong road, and I don't want that. I used to associate comfort with being with someone, being loved or even just desired. Then comfort was a needle in the arm and the high that came from it. That was where I wanted to be at all times. Since then, comfort is helping people, doing what I love to do, being a doctor. I try to get through to people, and while Fox River Penetentary has very few who will actually listen, I try my best.

Lately it seems like my world has begun to unravel with every time I go into work. Usually a place where I enjoy being, a place dare I say is comfortable, my routine there has been shifted. It started with a kiss. Now it seems like every day I am falling farther and farther away from what I know, and headfirst into the unknown. I like to calculate things before they happen, I need that. I have grown comfortable with that...but now it seems like I don't know anything anymore...and I definitely don't know where I can find peace from my own feelings, or a place where I can truly be comfortable.

x Sara

His name was Richard. He was a patient. He was charming, to say the least. He tried his wiles on me, and for a moment I indulged him, just so I could distract him while I hooked in his IV. To tell you the truth, I don't even know what he came in for. He was a typical guy full of problems, and that attracted me right away. I remember coming in to check on him often. I was in my third year of residency, and if I slept at all, it was stolen hours between shifts. I was exhausted, and quite honestly cranky most of the time. He made me smile.

He continued to make me smile days later, out on a date...and months later when I brought him his fix of morphine...coupled with my own. I remember my hands trembling when I tied off my arm. I was sure I wouldn't be able to do it. But he sat there, high himself, coaxing me on, telling me the clarity and joy it would give me. That it wasn't bad, that it was simply making myself feel good, which would in turn let me do my job better. The cool prick of the needle sent chills up my back and the drug took over almost immediately. There was no clarity, it was a cloudy peace that took me over. I don't remember much of the months that came after that, just the urge to take more, the urge to find that blissful peace.

So yea, meeting Richard changed my life...but at the moment, not for the better. Thinking back on it, even however far I've come, that was a meeting I would give anything to change. I can't say that it was all his fault, I can't say that maybe I wouldn't have gone there without him...but I guess all I can do is take it day by day, no matter how hard that may be.

x Sara Tancredi

Okay all you friends of this journal. As summer has come, I find myself bored silly, so I figured I would extend to the people on my TM journals (since I've already done it on my personal journal) an offer to do a header for anyone who wants one.

Samples of work I've done:
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 4

So if you guys are interested, just reply to this post and fill out the following form:)

( LJ Header Specifics... )