On another thread: re: "I think it was my wife who helped. I was really down, and she said "You've been here before and you always get through it."

It wasn't like that for me. I was squashed like a bug by my beloved.

The man I'd been with for 15 years left me as I slid downward, became ill, and lost a good-paying job. The person I most trusted in life, called "the best person I've known." Left 5 days before my birthday, and tore my character to shreds on the way out the door. It happened at this time of year, and sometimes the pain washes over me, a great wave of physical pain. I can be standing in a Home Depot -- the kind of place we'd usually be together --and I wonder if I am going to faint. His words -- that I am so filled with hate and anger and bitterness that he can't go out in public with anymore -- washes over me sweeping away any progress I've made, at least for a time.

I don't want to keep playing this tape. Like a skip on an old LP that keeps playing over and over. It's been almost two years.

Sometimes the thought of being with a man again nauseates me. I don't want anyone who can hurt me this much ever again to be in my energy field. Everyone with clothes on, one foot always on the floor when on a bed -- if it was good enough for the Hollywood moral censors, Rock Hudson and Doris Day, good enough for me now.