My girl (Dawn) cannot see me today. She left a message, short and to the point, and sucking in crying. Not whining crying, but the hopeless torture chamber kind of crushing that I know her life is. I think it's happening now, her spirit is finally being crushed. I've been amazed over the years at how she stays so sane in the face of her life, the goons running her asylum, and now it's finally too much, I think. That's what it sounds like. It happened to me. I want to forget mine, but I want to help her. Mostly, though, I am just an audience, a friendly face in the stands watching the wreck.

I finally accepted the reality of how bad it really was for me. For years. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks two nights ago leaving the movies. Harry and I saw Freaky Friday, and there is the best stepdad ever in that movie. That, combined with the earlier call to Dawn and her dead numbness that I remember so well, just crashed it home. It really was that bad for me. And the part that clicked in that I have never really got before was the humiliation of it all, of how everyone else in my world saw it, saw how rude and mean and humiliating my stepdad was to me, but it was just an accepted part of life. That's why I guess I've had trouble tuning into it having been that bad, because life went on relatively normal all around it. What, was I some kind of freak that it was okay to treat me like that? I guess that's the conclusion one would draw.