Yes, there is a relief. For many years I've known something is seriously wrong with me. I've known it as certainly as I know my sexual orientation. I just couldn't figure out what it was. I have an unyielding depression that I've struggled with since, at least, age ten. I tried to kill myself at age ten.

I don't connect well with others. Early on I thought whatever was wrong with me was just immaturity and depression - and I'd grow out of that. Next, I wondered if I was DID. I feel like a child in a 59y/o body. Recently I wondered if I had Asberger's. I am socially inept. I feel alien. I feel like I am a different species of human being.

I was driving home from therapy yesterday and had an idea...maybe this is not Aspergers. Was the child abuse and adult abuse so bad...that it has made me feel this way?

Now a T has had me look at Complex PTSD. Oh my god, that's me. Almost every point is me.

The relief is that now the thing that's wrong with me has a name. It's not a foreboding entity. It's a condition that I can name and fight against.

I'm just so incredibly grieved that someone would abuse a little child so badly that they would pop out of their body and hover over the scene of the trauma and see everything that is happening to her. Again and again. Helpless. No escape. No rest. Then to be victimized several times as an adult- not see it coming. No one helping me.

I am grieved that everything that was done to me was so bad that it damaged me and changed who I was meant to be. The abuse damaged the child so she stopped growing emotionally while the rest of me was able to excel academically. Yet, I had trouble holding jobs because ...I wasn't emotionally prepared.

I'm sorry...i am processing this. I am sad. I am grieving.

Pre