Rohag and Elana, thank you so much. I started crying all over again when I read your wonderful notes. I almost feel I can reach out and grasp your hands across cyberspace. Getting this out is important. I wish I didn't have a backlash of shame every time I dare take up space and speak my emotions and experience. Yet, I applaud and support others for doing that.

I don't know why my life has been so hard. Even entering it was a struggle. I swallowed amniotic fluid, had anoxia, and nearly died. That and scarlet fever age 6 may have caused minor cognitive problems. An abusive drug-addicted brother, neglectful parents who loved me but were in chronic crisis themselves. I was invisible. Growing up with my dad having recurrent cancer, always ill, my mom resenting him for it. She was always narcissistic, angry, bitter, wanted me to mother her. Already emotionally fragile, I was raped at 16 during a family vacation. A lifetime of inattention or dissociation, terrible self-esteem, depression, anxiety...I just have not been able to recover from all this.

I made strides at times, had good periods for 6 months at a time, approached normalcy. Then, a host of new problems began with menopause four years ago. I've never been hit this hard, this long, without a break. Since menopause, rosacea and a compulsion to pick, then the strangest yet, musical pseudo-hallucinations, not psychotic, more OCD-related, and really annoying. It comes and goes, but when it comes, it's constant and repetitive. Imagine 18 hours of Amazing Grace or Help Me Rhonda or the '60's Marlboro cigarette jingle. A year ago, I lost all drive for creating art, a life-long passion, as well as motivation for cooking, cleaning, bathing, reading, writing, etc., and substituted watching old Bonanza episodes in their place.

I'm focusing here on the bad stuff, I realize. There's been the good, too, just not nearly enough to balance out the bad. I really, really hope it can still get better. If I could work or volunteer, find a new therapist, a drug that works, a local support group, a husband, a belief in God...get back to meditation, get out of the small "I", get a brain transplant. I'll keep working at it, keep trying to show up. There are big pieces of my story here that I haven't told before. (Let's just keep it between us...and the internet). I appreciate your indulgence and forgiveness, and hope that I haven't been a bore.