I know I should probably wait until tomorrow after the press conference to write this blog post but please forgive me, I just can’t. A chill went down my spine today when I heard that three girls who went missing ten years ago and written off as dead were found alive inside a house.

Amanda Berry was 17 years old in 2003 when she went missing after working her shift at Burger King. Gina DeJesus was 14 years old when she went missing walking home from school in 2004. Michele Knight was 20 years old when she vanished in 2000. All three women were found alive today inside a house in Cleveland. A neighbor heard screams coming from the house and rushed to help. He went to the door where he heard screaming and knocked the door down and found Berry with a child. Berry then informed the neighbor that the other two women were upstairs.

The neighbor, Charles Ramsey, staged an interview today that will definitely be replayed for years to come because of some rather outlandish parts in it. But despite the rather bizarre interview, the guy is a hero. If he didn’t hear the screams and go over and investigate, who knows how much longer, if ever, it would take for the girls to have another opportunity to escape. Right place. Right time.

I can’t imagine having ten years of my life robbed from me. I put myself right inside Amanda’s shoes as we are roughly the same age. I have done so much, learned so much, and experienced so much in the past ten years since I was 17 that I am beyond outraged that Berry had so much savagely taken away from her. Same goes for the other two girls of course too. TEN YEARS for Amanda and Gina. THIRTEEN YEARS for Michele. How do you keep going on when you are kidnapped and living against your will? What goes through your head each day? How terrible must it be to live inside a living hell for over 3,650 days.

I feel so much for the families. All the torment they have had to endure over the last decade is unfathomable. Berry’s mother died in 2006 to what many attributed as complications from the stress and heartache she went through with her daughter’s disappearance. How many nights must these family members have stayed up in a cold sweat trembling about the fates of their daughters? How many nightmares must they have dreamed up during unsatisfying sleep? How many days, weeks, months, and years were absolutely ruined for them because they had no idea what happened to their children?

But while I feel awful for the families, the majority of my sympathy and concern extends to the three women. Not to be repetitive, but they were missing for TEN YEARS. Amanda and Gina were robbed of their senior years of high school, their college experience, and their chance to live out some of the best years of their lives. Instead of getting to be young adults living through years that most of us get to look back on with great memories, they were living in a house of horrors. While I got to graduate college and move on to a professional job that I love, those girls had to live under a roof with a sick and twisted man. Not fair at all.

Tomorrow a press conference will be held and we will learn more about what happened to these women over the past ten years. As each day goes by, even more details will come out about the atrocious cards these women were dealt. Expect stories that will make your skin crawl, stories that will make you hold on tighter to your children.

So tonight I am especially mindful of how lucky I am but also saddened at how unlucky other people are. It is 100% certain that right now other women across this country are being held in captivity. There are families out there who are left guessing about the whereabouts of their loved ones, absolutely terrorized as they go through all the different possibilities. It just doesn’t seem right that I get to chill out in my nice apartment and watch the NBA playoffs totally at my own will while I know that other people just like me are scared beyond belief, living in a prison controlled by a sick psychopath. We need to pray for more people like Charles Ramsey being in the right place at the right time. Don’t Blink.