Dok-torr, you reminded me that we ARE all different. I needed the change in activity levels to get my mind off the smoking.

Mmelindas, I think we will need to give you a yellow jersey (hope I got the reference right). I am so glad to have you gals to remind me it is not just me alone in this difficult world.

My BF is not very health concious, and my depression (and I finally admit it may be PTSD) tend to keep me wallowing in my little safe-appearing (NOT!) cocoon. So the positive influence of this forum is very important to me. In fact I am crying now, (good tears).

Yesterday went to the Golden Arches, and wanted the DVD I had read about (But had already chosen the deep-fried fish TWO in fact .). So I asked around to find someone ordering the salad, and paid for a drink to add to her order.

My DVD had a picture of Maya doing lunges. and was reminded of my crew days. Coach had us doing lunges in a parking lot, for about 200 feet. Everyone else had finished, and I felt I was holding up the practice, so I started rushing to finish. He told me to go back and do them right. First one, and then a few other girls came back for more lunges to keep me company.

WARNING WOUND-LICKING COMING UP:

So much of my childhood, I felt alone, and at the mercy of others. My mother had her own probllems, and couldn't be bothered about mine, so she trivialized them. My peers at school mercilessly taunted me. I honestly felt my only purpose for being was to test my peers' capacity for cruelty. I tried to fast, because of al the guilt I felt, for the staving masses in Africa who weren't as luck as I was. And then felt lke a total failure when I would break my hunger strike. ( I guess I'm lucky, I never thought about purging.)

I dreaded parent teacher conferences, because my mother would then criticise me because my test scores were so high, I SHOULD BE getting A's. At the same time, if I talked about someday going to college, I would hear, "what makes you think you'll go to college, when your brother is losing his grant". The high school counselors' recommended that I attend the public college prep school that just that year was opened to girls. When I became excited about this possibility, my mother said that she thought I would just be too lazy to take the bus to school, and just drop out.

I was the only National Merit Scholarship Finalist at my public high school, in a class of about 950. I was so brainwashed by this time, that I told my counselors and teachers that they didn't understand, the scores didn't mean anything, I wasn't smart, I only did well on tests, and it was just a fluke, I couldn't do well in college.

Fast forward three or so years, to junior college. I get pregnant and marry the guy because of it. HE had been planning to get married all along, I was a substitute for his fiance who jilted him. He becomes physically abuse, even before the marriage. I cry to my grandmother who up to now has been one of the only reasons I an still somewhat sane. Her response was, "Why are you fighting with the husband of your child?" So I beleive that physical abuse is a normal part of a marriage that is just never talked about, like sex. And I stay married for seven years to the creep, who has no respect for me. I FINALLY figure out through girlfreinds at work, that some women are married because they enjoy it, and like their husbands, not just because divorce is wrong, and marriage is for better or for worse, and if he hits you, well that's just part of the worse.

And that is enough for now, many other relationships, cruel, probably abusive. But I still don't recognize when I am being treated badly.

Today I am dating someone, that I don't love, He doesn't spend time with me on the weekends, Our relationship is he may buy me McDonald's and we have sex, and occasionally he'll cut my grass. After two years, I've never been to HIS place. He's never spent the night at MINE. But he does try to stop me from crying, tell me he admires me, that I am smart, heis proud that I study math. He CLAIMS to not be married. I don't even ask to go away for a weekend together anymore.

OKAY DONE WITH THE SELF-PITY COMMERCIAL BREAK:

One of my counselors has told me that I have been badly brutalized, and my mother was intentionally cruel to me. That my minimization of it is just another symptom of my PTSD , (WHICH by the way, I DON"T think I have, because my mother had good reasons to be neglectful, with seven kids . And she never MEANT to be cruel and unloving).

Anyway, all that was just to let you gals know just how much it means to me to have positive company, and folks around who can be supportive.




And now I will shower and wash away the tears, because I have a bike to work on and some great folks are devoting their time and energy to a free bike repair clinic.

I will go ahead and post my insecurity and blemishs, because as someone here said about their birthmark, my freinds will like me whether I hide it or not, and I might as well know up front who are not my freinds.