Duchess, I for one am glad you are here. I've read several of your posts and while I can't lay claim to know you, I can say I believe you to be a very nice person, full of caring and wanting to live - to work out your problems and to help others do the same. I think that is why you are here and I am thankful.

I don't know if I have any answers or even if anything I say will be helpful to you, but your post here touched me deeply. I really wish I could reach out and just give you a long smug hug so that you could feel loved - important. For you are important and just as special as any person on this earth.

You mentioned people triggering you and while I too allow others to sometimes tick me off - I can't help but wonder if the problem really lies within ourselves? I believe for example, that only those we care about can actually have the power to offend us (wheter it is the people or the subject) for people we do not know or even like - does their opinion really count? I know someone that I like, admire and respect - they matter and what they think and say means something to me, but someone that I don't know, or don't like - what do I care, and why should I care, unless perhaps what they say is true? I guess, the thing I'm so trying to say here, is that only those things we care about, like or hate them - we still have an opinion on them, and it falls down to being a control thing to us. The idea I think, would be for us to control those things instead of allowing them to control us.

You asked, "Can you Imagine walking around hearing the groans of your dying friend taking his last breaths. or better yet talking to someone and only seeing that night replay over and over of my friend dieing infront of me."

And I can say yes to that, only I don't have to imagine - It happened and I was there - was fortunate to have survived, and so I can say I know what you mean. I have walked a mile ot two in those shoes.

I believe in God although I can't lay claim to being a Christian, and I believe God loves us all, but he gives us free will and therefore does not step in to change the results from choices we or others make for us. I do believe in the end that we have to account for the way we have lived, be it right or wrong, and that we can only account for how we chose to live our lives.

Bad things happen to everyone, including good people. I've long since quit trying to figure out why this happened for why that happened. God simply allows us to live our lives accordingly to how we choose; with the promise of a better life afterwards. He is always there for us, it's just that we are not always there for him.

Dying is as much a part of life as living and everyone plays an important role in how not just their life may turn out, but how others turn out. And sometimes people don't live to the expectations of others - such as your step-father that sexually molested you as a child. It really takes a low person to do such a thing. Surely, such a person has to be sick, for no person that is right would ever commit such an act upon another - expecially a child. Can I give you a hug? (((((Duchess))))) - I hope this helps some. Iknow it won't take away your pain, but it will let you know I care.

Christmas to a child is truely an amazing thing, and as a child I loved it beyond describtion, but that was before I learned that not every child had a Christmas and that has bothered me ever since I learned of it.

I think, Christmas is for the children and to know there were, and are children even today that don't get to have Christmas makes me really sad. I hope, I really do, that I will be able to help children some day, but before that can be, I will have to do better financially than I have this past year - unfortunately - I'm barely staying one step ahead of the bill collectors. But had I any extra money - you could be sure it would go to children at Christmas time.

I had spoken of my grandfather in a post to BP just last night. He was one of the few men (or people even) that I so admired. He adopted myself, along with my sister after our mother died, and saved us from horrible times with our father. But he wasn't able to raise us both, so an aunt and uncle took me in.

But he did teach me much in the following years, and when he died - I was 16 - my world seemed to died along with him. I used to stop by his grave everyday for a spell, and did so for many years afterward.

He had became a man when he was 14 (I'll never be the man he was) when his father was killed on Christmas day in the coal mines. He went to work in those same mines the day after his fathers funeral so he could help support his mother, 3 brothers and 3 sisters. He put 2 of his brothers thru college even after he had met and married my grandmother, and the two of them had 12 children. I was lucky to have had him in my life.

I've listened to my stepmother (his daughter and my aunt by birth) speak of hoeing corn on a hillside so steep that she would have to dig her a foothold to stand in, and place the dirt she had removed around the corn. Of getting an apple at Christmas and thinking she was rich.

So I know it sucks to have so loittle and to have experienced so many terrible things in life while others eem to have everything. I suspect it will always be so. But there is always hope, as long as we live, that things will get better, and it is possible too, if we try. But we must work at it, unless we're so lucky to win the lottery, and even then, the money itself will not solve all of our problems, but the attitude that lies within us.

So maybe nothing I've said will be helpful to you, or maybe (and I'm really hoping here) that you will see you are not alone, and that people do care about you, and that will help you some. I sure hope so. Can I give you yet anaother hug? (((((Duchess))))) - I hope you like my hugs for I sure enjoy giving them.

Your friend Sam

"You'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try."