Hi all, I would just like to say thanks to everyone who answered. It's great that someone out there knows what it means to live under very controlling people, and the debilitating effect they have on a person's life. I think it is becoming more clear as I go along - I'm going to have to break these 'ties that bind'. But, I still can't help but feel kind of pathetic, because everywhere around me I know that there are people with worse problems than mine, and that alone makes me feel extremely guilty and even more undeserving. What really shocks me is just how much of an effect it has on a person. I can't understand why it has taken away all the things that I used to enjoy in life. I feel so numb to all emotions. I am beginning to hate everything I do. I have zero energy to do anything. I know it sounds silly, but I just can't help but think that it's my fault somehow, that I've really angered someone who is now taking it out on me.

Also, it's just amazing how guilty controlling people can make you feel. It's uncanny how I can literally give hundreds of hours of attention to the things these people ask me to do, and when I only want 5 minutes for myself, I am the worst and most ungrateful person in the world. And, the feeling of guilt is so real, even though my logic tells me that it's nonsense. It's like I can see exactly what the answers are, but there is a glass wall between me and it. Everybody else is on the other side of the glass wall. It's also light on that side but dark on this side. It just feels like everybody else 'gets' life and I don't, like I'm too stupid or something.

I just feel so sad, like I'm totally missing out on life. Everyone else my age that I see everyday are so happy, and don't have a care in the world. One day soon, I might be 30 and this part of my life will be gone, and I'll have never had the fun I could have had, and I'll never get it back. Sure, I can still go and do something with my life and maybe make a success of it, but this time that is supposed to be great will be gone forever. All my life I've had to deal with the older people's problems, it's like I had no youth.

I have one other fear still. It seems that even when I get out underneath the controlling of these older people, say when I'm at university for the day, I seem to attract these people toward me. I have closer relationships with the professors than with the other students in my class. I especially seem to attract those that tell me what they want me to do. I think I've been conditioned or something, or this thing has imprinted itself on my life. I don't know if I'll ever be free.

I don't know if you guys are religious or not, but I am. I just can't help but think that after all this, the day I'm no longer here I'll just be told that I don't deserve any consolation whatsoever for my miserable life and that I will be punished for not understanding what I had to do. Besides, why should I be rewarded, I didn't do anything good.

Once again, thanks to everyone who listened and who gave hugs, I really do appreciate it. I'm just really glad that you guys who got it right to break free actually did it. I don't think I need to tell anybody here just how debilitating it is, and how unhappy it makes a person. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.