I think--sharing, sharing a piece of something within ourselves that is 'intangible, yet precious' is wonderful. What I share and how what I share impacts others, gives a fulfillment that nothing 'real' matches.

What you shared may, in many ways, impacts those who read what you've written. It will impact some more than others. It will move others to write or in other ways spur creativity. It may move others to have a kinder heart. It may be the tipping point to help someone change their life or change someone else's life. It will hurt some by triggering their own pain and it will help to heal others, but because you chose to share it... it matters. Which means you matter.

We can all spout platitudes about the 'glass half empty/half full'. We can commiserate and empathize with the challenges of your life (which we do and others will as well). We can hope that it will improve. However, it all comes down to what you value for yourself. You value what is on this site. You value it enough to share.

Sharing is really what this and all other site like this are really all about. That's what keeps me going. Sharing.

Hugs,

Leila

are what some would regard as 'damaged goods'.
By the very fact that we post here, we are different to the mainstream if not outside it at times.
I don't think that there are many of us who are totally unscathed by our lives.
No two of us are the same nor are the things that have happened in our lives the same.
Yet we soldier on and make the best of what hand we are dealt with.

Some of us are able to do what the boxers would say, 'roll with the punches' and ... well deal with and get on with life.
We hide a lot of emotion and feelings. That is part and parcel with who we are and the world we live in.
"That's Life" I'm afraid.

On a brighter side, it is 50years since the UK law that made having gay sex a crime was repealed.
The environment for LGB people here is a lot better these days and for 'T' it is improving quite quickly.
Someday and I hope it is soon, we can be far more open about who we are and what we want to do with out lives. Then coming out as 'T' won't be front page news in the National Enquirer or similar rags.

Samantha

For just an example of some of what I've dealt with, you can read my blog here that I posted on January 19th of this year. I didn't go into really explicit detail there, just mentioned thoughts about what I dealt with in my childhood years, especially during the adoption.

When the adoption broke down, I was sent off to a group home where everything went to hell in a hand basket for quite a while. It took a worker there nearly two years to break through my anger and actually be able to help me through a lot of what I had experienced while there.

I went through some other not so fun experiences after moving to Stratford, Ontario in late June of '84. I was eighteen years old.

When I was nineteen, a few months before my birthday in the spring of '86, I started having vision problems. I saw a doctor about it, mentioned that I had a hard time dealing with glasses pinching my nose and he recommended contacts as an alternative option.

My Children's Aid Society worker (I was still a Crown Ward at the time) outright denied that option, then refused to get me glasses.

Well, I managed to get through the rest of the semester, only having difficulty with grade twelve English, which I was taking for the second time, after having failed it the first time because I couldn't understand half of what was being taught or discussed in the class.

To counter that, I was acing just about every other class, having posted no less than a 95% for French the prior semester, a 98% for grade ten German in the same semester as the French and 97% for grade eleven German in the spring semester. I never scored less than 90% on any of my math or science classes, heck, other than grade twelve English, I pretty much breezed through my classes.

That changed in the fall of '86. I came back to school that September and immediately had very serious vision issues, serious enough that I was unable to attend afternoon classes for most of the time over the next eleven weeks. What was happening, as I later discovered, was that the fluorescent lights were triggering migraines, I could handle the first two classes (a bit over two hours total), but going back into class in the afternoons was pure hell, as the migraines would become severe enough that I was experiencing severe dizziness and nausea.

Eventually, the principal reported to my CAS worker that I wasn't staying in classes all day, and my CAS worker, rather than find a way to help me to deal with the problem, dropped me like a bad habit; I ended up expelled from school and drifted for six months before ending up in jail.

Once I was out of jail, I came to Toronto where I spent most of my days for the next nineteen months working anywhere from sixteen to twenty hours a day, two to three jobs each day, then the Fibromyalgia made itself known through frequent bouts of pain.

Eventually, the pain was bad enough that I couldn't do the work anymore, so I ended up on social assistance. I've been on either welfare or disability for most of the time since then, partly because of the vision issues, partly the Fibro, mostly because I am bipolar and have MPD.

Mental health issues like bipolar disorder are much more likely to get one on disability here in Ontario. I know that when I was just trying to get disability without using the bipolar, I got denied every single time and was told to go and do physical labour, "there's nothing wrong with you". If I had been in a wheelchair, they might have helped me sooner, I guess, but Fibro doesn't always show visible signs for others to notice.

I also have what is commonly called multiple personality disorder. I have half a dozen or so personalities, about half of them I've only seen once or twice. They vary from young girls, one four years old, one six, to young men of about sixteen to nineteen years of age. The younger ones are cute and sweet, just like one would want a little girl to be. The males, though, are a whole different ball game. The one I have had the most experience with is Johnny; he'd be about sixteen, always looking for trouble, if he can't find it, he'll start it, leaving me to face the music.

I've been dealing with the headaches since '86 and the Fibro since '89. I had a brief bout of asthma when I was eighteen or nineteen, but recovered and had no problems with that until the mid-'90s. I've had to use an Advair inhaler for the last two years, with Ventolin as back-up.

I discovered in '95 that I had already lost about 25% of my hearing in both ears due to damage in both middle ears. At the time, I was told that the hearing loss would increase by about 1 to 3% per year, so I now have maybe 50% hearing left, likely less.

I'm extremely light sensitive, I wear sunglass clip-ons over my glasses and still get blinded quite a bit when I'm outdoors. I'm also noise sensitive, I used to have hearing aids, wore them outside and couldn't handle sudden noises at all; I haven't had them since '98 because of that. It's not fun when you're walking along, an emergency vehicle goes by with sirens blaring and you hit the ground hard because of the noise.

I also have two deteriorated discs in my neck, they've made things fun for nearly thirty years, I can only turn my head about 15° each way.

I'm honestly not sure, but I think I may be borderline autistic myself; I've never actually been diagnosed as such, but it fits well enough.

So yeah, I can understand a lot of the stuff you're going through. Pain has been a steadily increasing part of my life since '89, and a lot of other issues either were present before that or have materialized or returned since the Fibro became an everyday occurrence for me.

The one major difference is that I haven't worked since '89. I did take a basic woodworking course at one point and enjoyed it quite a bit. but I believe that was in the summer of '89, so the Fibro hadn't come around yet.

My biggest issue over the years has been that most of the public places I've been in use fluorescents as their primary source of lighting. Since '86, I can only handle being under fluorescents for about two hours at most, so I hadn't tried to get my GED at all.

Someone here mentioned to me a month or two ago that there are places out there that use LED lighting, I think she said, not fluorescents. She suggested that I look around for places like that and ask about doing internships in areas that interest me (like foreign languages).

As I said earlier, I enjoyed that woodworking course, so that may be an option as well. I'll be exploring these things after I find a new place.

At the moment, I have a rather dire need to find a new place to live, tenants have to be out of this building on Monday night at the latest. I've been looking for places for the last two months, most have been way too small for me (I own a fair number of paperbacks, likely about 4k, maybe even close to 5k, and I want to be able to have them wherever I end up, so I need a fair bit of space). Others have demanded money above and beyond first and last, with one even demanding I set up an Interac transaction before I could even view the space. Nope, sorry.

There have been a couple of others that I suppose I could have taken, but I have mobility issues, especially with stairs, and a couple of these places were showing apartments on the fourth or fifth floors, no elevators in the building. I can handle a dozen or so steps, but not fifty.

There are a couple of possibilities that I will be checking out in the next day or so, I'm hoping that one of them will be good. Covering the rent won't be an issue for the two places I have interest in at the moment, I have enough in the bank for first and last for either one.

The big issue at the moment is getting everything packed and ready to haul butt out of here on Monday.

I have to admit that I've done a lot of bitching about things in my life, but I'm going to try to turn things around, despite all my issues.

Like you, I help Erin by dropping some cash into the site when I can afford it. This place helps me to cope with life's insanities each day.

In my own case, sheer stubbornness keeps me going.

I've thought many times over the years about committing suicide, but I haven't tried anything like that since early September of '98, even though I went through sheer hell not long after that. Oh, there were times when I was really seriously depressed, but I've not been on meds for psych issues since September of '99, and I haven't self-harmed since a year before that. I'm not sure how I cope when things get rough.

Sorry for the big post here, I sincerely hope that you can sort things out and improve your situation soon.

The main thing that keeps me going is family and friends. I've had low points- almost certainly not as low as you- and times when I wanted to shut myself off from the rest of the world. Sometimes it's hard to understand why anyone would ever like me or want to associate with me, but when that happens, one needs to remind oneself that there are people who genuinely love you. On those rare occasions I'm even remotely tempted to end it all, I'm reminded of the words of Raymond Reddington. You have to trust that if you fall, there will be people there to catch you.

Debs xxxx