magickal1 -- I stopped breathing when I read your post. Your emotions are so pure, your understanding of where you are is so incredibly clear. You can use that power to see the truth. You can see the beauty that you are, it's in your very being. Only someone beautiful could have written what you did. Only someone beautiful could so yearn to hold on to someone you love so dearly. I have been where you are, not being able to see my own beauty, and lashing out at those who loved me and destroying what I held most dear. Maybe my experience can help you. This may sound overly simple, but it helped me to break through. I took a crayon into the hand I don't write with, but I wrote with it anyway, statement after statement written on construction paper, like a child. And I kept writing page after page of every little thing I was angry at each of them about -- those who viciously attacked me so many times -- starting every sentence with "I am mad at you because ..." With this simple exercise, and all the tears that came with it, my life began to turn around because I could forgive myself for how I was acting as soon as I knew really what I was angry about. It gave the child within who was so angry a voice. I hope this helps you, but even if it doesn't, please don't give up on you. You can make it, magickal1. You deserve to make it and the despair can stop. You are not alone. You are a survivor.

Be well,

mtd