Well here I am, 42 and seem to have no meaning to what or where my life is going. I feel like I am just going through motions in my everyday life. I guess maybe the easiest way to explain it is that I have felt very rutted in my existance. I feel very lost, with no direction in my life. I guess maybe if I lay it down here from the beginning of my life till now, something will give. Here it goes....

I was born on December 4, 1967 in Upstate New York. I was given up for adoption as an infant and was placed into a foster home. Roy and Theresa were my foster parents at first but then adopted me two or three years later. I found out I was adopted about age 11. I often wonder what the process was to adopt. At a very young age (cannot remember when it started, but I know it was before entering Kindergarden) my father began to sexually abuse me. (I remember only bits and pieces but I know that it wasn't right. I hated the way it made me feel.) He fondled, and touched me at first and then it began.....he started to make me perform oral, forced **** sex, then progressed to penetration). By the time I was 10 or 11 he was forcing me to have intercourse with him. At age 12 I started my period. I thought this would be my saving grace, I thought it all would end for fear of pregnancy, but I was wrong. Then came spermicides and condoms. He would come to my room at night first fondling and then prodding. I would often "pretend" to be sleeping. Sometimes this would make him get mad and shake me roughly. One day after school, I was watching an afterschool special about incest. I had so many mixed emotions after I watched it. I started to think that maybe I did something that provoked my father to do the things he did. I decided to be brave and ask him if what we were doing was incest. The only recollection I have of this is the one response that he gave me. "I'm not your father." I was floored, so much that to this day that still bothers me. I felt abandoned. Being adopted you kinda feel that way to begin with, now I felt that my feelings were affirmed. At the age of seventeen I finally decided that enough was enough. I ran away from home and decided to call the Child Abuse hotline. I was immediately placed in a foster home. (Fortunately I was placed in a good one.)

If I'm going to be honest I feel like I have just been rambling here. I really need some supportive help and friends. I have had so many problems overall that I feel so lost. I feel disconnected from family and friends, like my life has no meaning. I want to change that. That is why I decided to register and hopefully through advice, friends and a place to feel I belong I can begin the process of healing.