Hopeful : Good to hear from you. Yeah. I now know I'm not a "weirdo" who nobody wants around - I'm not much different than most and alot like those here. I just can't act like it's not there anymore.
Raven : It took me 54 years to finally start therapy and start to untangle my life. It's been a difficult, at times brutal, 3 years (I'm 57 now) but I'm just starting to get a peek at what freedom might be like. Gotta ways to go to be sure, but I'm chipping away...

The common denominator I see in all our stories is that we come from circumstances we had no control over and were not our fault. And we didn't deserve it! And now we're left with the mess to clean up. Isn't it nice we don't have to do it by ourselves anymore.