TAMPA — Stephanie Ragusa prayed that things would get better this year.
"Maybe my year is 2009!" she wrote with a smiley face in an August 2008 letter from jail. "I'll chalk up this year to a 'retreat.' "
Ragusa, 30, the former Davidsen Middle School teacher accused of having sex with two male students, is awaiting trial.
On Wednesday, the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office released eight letters she wrote last year to Mike Chin, a pen pal with a Brandon post office box.
"At times, the idea of returning to my 'normal life' seems more daunting than staying put," Ragusa wrote on Aug. 11, 2008.
She focuses on her faith, relationships and movies she'd like to see in the letters from about July through November of last year.
She complained to Chin about her fleeting relationships with relatives and friends. The only people she had regular contact with, she wrote, were her father and boyfriend.
After text messages Ragusa sent to the middle school students about sex she is alleged to have had with them became public, she wrote that her "loved one isn't exactly standing by me."
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