Yes, at this moment I feel as if I need to get away from here because of triggering. I came here earlier feeling angry. Now I'm feeling sad. Hopeless, again. Feeling as if there is not one single thing that I can do to improve this lonely and miserable existence.

I guess that my reaction to someone snapping at me would depend on my mood. My immediate reaction to feeling hurt, lately, has been to snap back with vengeance. Immediate self-righteous gratification but I usually feel bad afterward.

I don't really visit that often: just when I feel a need for at least one real human being to read what I've written, needn't matter if I receive replies. And I come here with specific questions. I just discovered in the past few days how to find the subscribed threads. That has made me more apt to return.

I understand your reasoning for not frequenting this site, though. Very much in agreement in re triggering.

Just a by the way, and I mean no offense: I don't know if Laura Beth is your name or a nickname, but I have always thought it a lovely combination of names. I dated a Laura Beth and that's exactly what she preferred to be addressed as... not Laura or Beth, but Laura Beth.

Now I'm making myself sadder. I started writing a cumulative goodbye letter to the four women that I loved in my life and couldn't stop crying after I had written their names, chronologically. I can't conjure up what it felt like to be in love but I know that when I was I was happy. I can't conjure that feeling of happiness, either. I do recall that love had so many different levels of intensity; from thinking of her when she was away to ravaging one another in the most humanly/beastly manner. It's accepted knowledge that men are more visual in desire but, for me, it was all about touch. I've always thought that the reason that any sort of pornography was always grotesque to me. I was always a fan of holding hands, of walking with arms around one another, of leaning into one another. It was a fine thing to have an intact, unscarred body. Now I'm a legless and scarred freak with a broken and sick mind. And so *******ed lonely.

See how quickly the trigger works? I'll dream of one of them tonight – Susan, Nancy, Chandra or Martha. And wake up with my heart pounding.

This, this life now, seems all the worse for having felt happiness for the first 30 years. 31 years. I'm really feeling sorry for myself now; I wouldn't exchange the happiness for a life of constant misery. I married Martha. I had the opportunity, two days before the marriage, to marry Chandra. That single choice would have made all the difference.

Ah, crap.