O.K. I have to admit that when I leave this place for weeks or months as I have recently it's because I've stopped dealing with my stuff -- my grief, my fears, my insecurities, you name it. I try to ignore it and I neglect what I have to do to stay stable in my recovery. And that means recovery from a whole lot of crap.

What has felt biggest to me has been the s.a. I was 7. I was bound. There was a gun and a knife. There was 2 of them. And I had to go back there again and again so they wouldn't hunt me down and shoot me. And today, I still suffer from the flashbacks, the terrors, the isolation, the feelings of worthlessness. I've been through all kinds of therapy, been in a psych hospital, pills, tried to kill myself, done it all -- and it still %#@&#! hurts.

Then my mother died. I was 13. I watched her die slowly from cancer. And I never grieved. I didn't know how or what to do and my father was too emotionally detached to do a damn thing for me. He literally announced her death from my bedroom doorway, telling me I wasn't going to school because "Mommy left us last night." Then he went downstairs. No hug. No shared tears. No words --- no assurances. He might as well been dead too. I was in college before I figured out it was o.k. to cry over her loss.

Then my father got remarried to a monster, on my 14th birthday. He forgot it was my birthday. He waited less than a year before trying to replace my mother and he really screwed up. The marriage lasted all of a year, but not before her teenage daughter moved in with us and raped my little brother -- age 9 -- repeatedly. And my father did nothing. I stopped talking to everyone in the house and I was sent to a therapist "for disrupting family harmony." Go figure.

So I left as soon as I could. I was 17. And by the time I was 19, when my life was finally starting to feel normal ... my father was arrested. It was in all the papers, all over the damn country -- it was that kind of crime.

No wonder I trust nobody. No wonder I isolate. No wonder my hands still shake and I try to escape all pain. No wonder I'm self destructive. I hate that I'm still so haunted by the past -- and I just turned 39. But I hate, more than anything, being this alone. I hate, hate, hate being this alone.

Thanks for listening.

mtd