For All Intents and Purposes, the Writer was Never Here.

This is a site full of aspiring writers. Everyone reading, for the most part, likes to mix words, shake words, drink words, eat words, and spit words. I’m one of these people. Hi, nice to meet you.

Why do we like to do this? Because words hold power but beyond that, the written word holds power like no other. This power doesn’t come naturally to all. We know Ghost Writing as the thing that famous people do when they don’t actually have the skill or time to do it themselves. Where we can scrawl furiously for hours on end, euphoria at our temples, others barely know how to appropriately write a sympathy card. This is where I can be of use.

I hear the lilts and tilts of a person’s voice and weave them into the written word. Is the person’s voice lost? No. I make sure that what I write perfectly embodies what the person wants to say while not losing a fiber of originality. I’ve written wedding speeches and sonnets (even sonnets about Fortnite), letters to lawyers and emails of dispute. I can write anything a person feels they need to say. Most recently, I’ve written a victim impact statement that has the potential to bring awareness for one of our time’s darkest epidemics -- opioid addiction. This statement exerted such influence on the Judge that the defendant was charged with the maximum sentence.

Ghost Writing doesn’t have to be a memoir for someone famous, it doesn’t have to be the next book in a series of washed out romance novels on the 2 dollar rack at Walmart. Ghost Writing can be something a little more now and a little more real. I hope that what you read below is a testimony to the craft, a craft that strives to make the emotions of others alive. Names have been changed to protect the identities of those written about.

"Your honor, my name is Amelia Dominguez and I am the sister of one of the victims of the defendant Ryan Wayne. My brother, Javier Dominguez, is a direct victim of this person. And my nieces and nephew: Melina, Noella, Roy and myself are all victims of someone like this person.

Please give me a moment to describe how my family used to be and how we are now. And bear with me—my family is large and I have a lot of thorns to untangle.

My mother Celia and brother Javier, or Javi as we called him, came from a hardworking family in Mexico. My father Jose married my mom and adopted Javi. A few years later me and my sister Vanessa also known as Nessy were born.

We grew up on the bayou in 'X' Pointe near 'X.' Mexican families have a reputation for being close knit and ride or die. I’ve always felt that my siblings and I were the epitome of that standard. As an older brother, Javi was quiet, funny, protective and annoying as hell! I remember one time he thought it would be so funny to throw me, his little sister, in the Bayou. Not to mention, I didn’t know how to swim…

Javi was also a giant with the heart of a teddy bear. He truly did make you feel protected and loved. No matter what, he always would say, “I love you, Sis.” He never failed to make me know that... To make me and my little sister know that.

I know this is about Javi, but I can’t make this statement without talking about what happened to Nessie. Nessie met the father of her children at the age of 13. When she turned 15 something special happened. My beautiful and smart niece Melina was born. Seven years later, again something special happened, my niece Noella, also beautiful and very spunky was born. Shortly after Nessie and the girls’ father became addicted to heroin. In August of 2009 I was handed full custody of my nieces because my sister and her boyfriend kept getting caught stealing to support their addiction. I became a mother when I least expected it. It was hard as most things that are unexpected are but it was rewarding because I now have two of the most beautiful women on this whole Earth in my life. Nessie and her boyfriend eventually separated and she went on to have a son with Lucas Paretti. They had a son named Roy, my baby boy and my little Prince.

In 2013 Nessie was living with me and her children when her ex and the girl’s father died of a heroin overdose laced with fentanyl. Melina and Noella lost their father. And one week later, Melina, Noella and Roy lost their mother to heroin laced with fentanyl. Do you know how hard it is to tell a 6 year-old and 11 year-old that their mother has just died a week after you broke the news to them that their dad died?

Can you imagine telling your niece or your nephew this? How would you break it to them? Would you hide it from them for a week? So that they wouldn’t be distracted during their school’s standardized testing? Would you tell them right away? How would you do it?

At this point in my life here are the key things to keep in mind. I was the caretaker of Melina and Noella. In 2011 I lost my own parents. First my mom Esther, and then my father Jose 9 months later. Both were under my care due to illnesses. I dealt with the effects of my nieces losing their father. And now, I have just lost my baby sister. I was a single mother of three overnight. This was a lot to process and by this time, this was the third person who had died inside my house. The moments of Nessie’s death are blurred.

How much could you lose and still be who you are?

Javi was a lot of great things but he was also battling a lot of personal demons. He didn’t know who his biological father was, he got into a car accident, he lost the only father figure he knew and his own mom and sister. He was devastated by the same things that impacted me, too. For a while he didn’t even know that my dad wasn’t his real dad. Can you imagine what it felt like when he learned the truth? He felt like a black sheep. Eventually he began using heroin as well. And in 2018 I lost my brother to this god-forsaken drug. Again, it was laced with fentanyl.

Here is a picture of Javi and our nieces and nephew the day of Nessie’s wake. We wore her favorite color, purple. If you see me, I’m smiling. Despite everything I went through up until that point, I’m smiling. I knew I had to be strong for the girls and for Roy. I still knew how to be funny and how to laugh all the time. I was outgoing. And though the moment in this picture was a moment of grief, it was a moment swollen with love. Because after everything, at least Javi and I still had each other.

Your honor, after everything, I am not happy anymore.

I am barely surviving.

I hate birthdays. Birthdays and death anniversaries might as well be the same thing.

I hate the smell of lilies. Because that sickly, sweet scent of lilies smell like the funeral home and it makes me feel cold.

I used to be filled with sunshine and I would radiate my happiness and warmth upon others... Look at how I’m smiling in this picture, I even managed to get the girls to smile on this terrible day…

In 2018 Javi was found dead in a 'X' bathroom. His was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have not been the same. I am a broken person.

After all of this, I myself underwent an addiction.

I became addicted to alcohol because alcohol doesn’t allow you to face your feelings. I won’t go into how this addiction spiraled out of control, how it affected my nieces and nephew, or how it affected my reliability at work--I was one of the best techs at work, I was a trainer, a go-getter but everything was slipping from my hands and I realized one day I had to be strong enough to tell my psychiatrist that I needed help because I didn’t want to drink anymore. I made the decision to go to rehab.

I left rehab in 2019 feeling on top of the world. I was living in a pink cloud as my psychiatrist told me. Everything was rosy. Refreshed, relaxed, refocused. I was feeling it all because I was so sure I was going to finally take control of my life. But that way of thinking was a snare.

Work, kids and stress soon hit me harder than ever because I didn’t have alcohol to hide behind. It didn’t get easier, it only got harder. I had to face it all head on. I never realized how I was too busy or too drunk to truly grieve. When depression set in it was like seeing a darkness so thick that you could feel it heavy on your skin. It was pulling me down, it is pulling. me. down. still. All of the feelings come at once now. And I’m facing them every second and as I’m facing them, I’m tied to my house. I can’t leave it. I’m scared to go to the store. Being here with you all today is a milestone for me. This is my third time in public in one year. And I can tell you I would not be here if I didn’t have these children in my life.

How much could you lose and still be who you are? Let me tell you, I am not who I was. I don’t know if I ever will be.

The bible says that God can’t give you more than you can bear. After all I’ve experienced, I need you (the defendant) to know this. Because I don’t know what fate you will face. And I’m not angry at you. But you never realized that what you did for a quick buck caused a chain reaction. You, and people like you, changed my life. And it forced my nieces and nephews to grow up quickly and without warning. Melina was four years old when she was telling the cops that her parents were shooting heroin. Noella has been committed to a hospital three times this year as a result of being too depressed. She is 14. I can remember the last memories of my parents. Can you? Roy can’t even remember how his mom used to play peek-a-book with him on the kitchen counter. And recently on January 16 2021, on my birthday, Lucas, Roy’s father, died from a heroin overdose laced with fentanyl.

People like you are helping to cause these tragedies. I need you to realize this. You are breaking the hearts of children and forcing them to grow up differently than how they should. Please realize this.

Because how much more do people have to lose?"

My passion is not to give others a voice, as I believe no one should assume that anyone is voiceless. Instead, my words only serve to perk an ear, to crane a neck, and to stir the heart.