Oh, I've been to therapists in the past. Not for quite a few years, but I went to a number of them in my later teens after the trial. A couple of them were supposed to be specialized in treating problems arising from sexual abuse (I was directed to them through victim services), but none of the therapists I've gone to were really able to do anything for me. One of them actually made things considerably worse, and I wound up losing an art scholarship from the results of their ill-advised art therapy. The medications route wasn't beneficial either. The last antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication I tried actually turned me violent psychotic and I had to lock myself in a room with instructions to call the police if I came out. After that I said no thanks to future prescription offers.

I have had books recommended to me in the past, and I did take a look at some of them. The problem is that I don't know any different, so I don't know what to change, or how to go about fixing it without feeling like I'm faking it all the time. Or if it even can be fixed. I've never known what it's like not to live with that kind of stuff, because it started so early and continued off and on until I was 12. Already by grade 8 I couldn't be around people and started getting homeschooled by a private teacher.

I was shown love as a child, but I never seemed to feel it back. To give an example, my grandmother was excellent to my sister and I. She was very kind, very attentive, and she never did anything to hurt us. There were even a couple of years when she lived with us, so we knew her pretty well. Yet even with how she was, I still couldn't handle her hugging me without it triggering the anxieties and muscles tensing. At the end of her life her health deteriorated, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time before she passed. All of my relatives were really distraught over this, and yet the only thing I felt inside was impatience and annoyance. I could make myself sound somewhat decent by claiming that why I felt that was because I didn't like seeing her suffer, but in reality those feelings were there because it was disrupting life for everyone else. Relatives were constantly calling me, e-mailing me, wanting to talk etc and I wanted that to stop.

Not once did I feel the need to go see her, I only spoke with her on the phone once or twice in her final year, and didn't go to the funeral. It was incredibly selfish and heartless, but that's who I have always been, right back to my very first friendship. I should feel ashamed about it, yet I don't. It feels like it's just the way it is, like how you can't change the weather.

I don't connect with people, but I don't know why. Is it due to the abuse? Is it due to brain injury during early surgeries? Or have I always been this way? I can't remember any time from before the abuse so I have no reference to compare to. All I can compare it to is other people... but what they describe feeling, I don't. That in of itself doesn't bother me, it's that I don't know why I don't feel it. What if it's not due to PTSD and it is who I actually have always been? If everyone thinks love, family, and friends are what life is about, where would that leave someone like me? Watching life from the sidelines?