I will try to keep this as short as I can and still get the most important parts out. I am originally from Albuquerque, NM. I now live in Kansas and have been here 16 years. I like it here because the pace of life is a bit slower than larger cities.

I also love Alb. too. I love the weather there and the culture. I miss the food the most.  :)

I had a very typical childhood with 2 parents a sister and everything was really fairly good in my life then. We had to move to KS when I was 18 for my dad's job and everything since then has been relatively challenging. My parents divorced a year after we moved here. I was 19, couldn't get along with either parent, and felt like I had no where to go. I ended up living with boyfriends and on and off with my dad. My mother remarried and that was actually a source of difficulty for my family because my step-dad is a dwarf(little person for political correctness). It was hard for my sister especially to deal with this as at 15 it was very embarrassing for her at the time. It was very hard on my father who felt like it was a slap in the face to his man hood.

My mother handled the sitiuation badly. Not to say my father wasn't responsible for some of their problems, he was at times very emotionaly and verbally abusive to us all. My mother did very hurtful things,  like taking him out for his birthday to tell him she wanted the divorce. She said I want a divorce, "By the way "Happy Birthday". How mean.

Anyway, my family has been split up and argued and bounced around where one of us was close to one parent and then vice versa, Even though we were a little older we were played against the other parent often.

I eventually married and that was a mess. I thought he was great at first. He held a good job, was a good provider etc..... But he drank, had a temper, and my mother hated him. I think she saw my father in him. She made our lives miserable. She convinced my sister to hate him and they would team up and berate him to me or critize me for being with him. My mom was at my wedding 45 minutes, threw birdseed down my dress and left with her little husband.(No offense, I actually like him alot).

We still have issues to say the least. She treats me like I am the lesser of her two children. But things are better now than they used to be.

 Well if that isn't enough.

I eventually divorced my abusive, drunk husband who was so abusive that I ended up with a nervous breakdown. He never hit me, but what he did emotionally was worse than any beating.

 After this I became involved with my best friend of 4 years. We were engaged and to marry in Dec. of 2001. That never happend. On the night of Aug. 19th 2001. He dropped dead in front of me. I was floored. He was only 35. I have worked around death and the elderly for years, but nothing prepares you when it is close to you. It gets better. 3 weeks later on 9-11 when the trade center was hit, I went to see my dad that evening to check on him and visit. We were very close and he had been my support through losing my fiance'. I arrived at his house and the door was unlocked and TV blaring. I couldn't find him so I wander the house calling for him. To my devestation I found him. He was slumped over his bed, was black and blue and cold. He was dead. According to the coroner he'd been gone two days.

I went into a place I can only call the black hole.

I know it has been seven years since this occurred, and longer for other events, but I have never been the same since. I am trying desperately to get past my trauma and pain and figure out how to live again without feeling ill, damaged and destroyed.

I am hoping that through this process I can regain the peace and joy for life I once had.

I don't want to live there anymore!!!!!

I want so much to have a bright positive future. One that isn't surround by pain and negative thoughts and memories.

I want everything I always dreamed of before some of the difficult things in my life happend.

I what others to know and I want to know and realize that there is so much more to me than what I have gone through.

I want others to see that no matter how bad life can get. We can survive and thrive. We can take anything that happens to us. Positive or negative and turn it into something beautiful and amazing. They say that through our struggles we find our greatest strengths, and I am learning that in some ways I am the strongest person I know, and that I am proud of me, even though, I am still not quite where I want to be in life.