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The New Year Competition.

I have an entry written, peer reviewed, all ready to go.

Now do I publish day 1 and hope no one betters it, or revises theirs to compete, do I wait for the end and hope to trump the others, or slide it out in the middle, hoping to impress the judges but go under the other entrants radar....

Decisions decisions....

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Kids Kamp

Don't know why, but my thoughts recently have been on the Kids Kamp universe of stories. I know they go back a ways. If I recall correctly, some of the authors were:

Holly H Hart
Maggie the Kitten
Shalimar

Who were some of the other authors?

Does anyone remember what the first few stories in this series were? Who was the original author?

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Contest Update: Judging Emma

Somehow, in a fit of enthusiasm punctuated by lots of exclamation points, I volunteered to be a judge for our 2024 New Year’s Writing Contest, even though this site alone is full of better and more accomplished writers. You know what they say about fools rushing in. Choirs of angels are undoubtedly waving cheerfully from their LazyBoy recliners and calling out, like Jamie Lee Curtis, “Make good choices!”

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spent my Boxing day getting mugged by a dog

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So I spent today getting mugged by a dog.

His name is Rocky, and he belongs to my aunt.

He's the kind of dog who basically has the doggie equivalent to hyperactivity.

He mugged me, my mom, my other aunt who was with us, and then started over with me.

He's famous in his neighborhood, to the point a couple of kids came over to play with him.

Do I need to even need to say I had a lot of fun today?

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Last Night

I watched Love Actually on Netflix. Yes I'd seen it before but it's back at No.8 in the top10 Australian shows, and my memories of it were a bit fuzzy. It is, after all, 20 years old.

What a lovely movie it is, fantastic cast, heartwarming stuff for the season, and some good songs in the soundtrack. Also some poignancy for me, like Alan Rickman, who died fairly recently, playing one of his rare nice roles.

Well worth another watch.

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Don't Respond

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Sunday evening I received an email with all my personal, private, and financial data listed on it. A security breach at one of the health hospitals let them copy everything about me and a million others. They offered to sell the list back to me before they placed it on the darkweb for sale.

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Heaven or not……….

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I was sitting on the couch in my living room this evening, just catching up on my e-Mail from the last several days, while my wife watched TV. We had been watching the news, and when it went off the show ET came on. It was a special broadcast about Celine Dion, so she left it there even though she usually doesn’t watch that show.

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Back again

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Well, I'm back again because I just couldn't stay away. I've been taking writing more seriously lately and kept thinking back to this place. It's the only place I really ever felt comfortable or at home. Whenever I try to talk to other writers online it's like talking to a brick wall, but here it's always been different. I appreciate each and every one of you and I look forward to making some new friends as well as getting back in touch with some old ones.

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Writing Contest -- My Approach to Judging

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Judging fiction is subjective. . .based on personal feelings and opinions.

I have helped judge several Big Closet contests in the past. In those instances, I picked the top three or five stories.

For the current writing contest (entries to commence 1/1), I’ve been asked to assign a number between one and one hundred for each story. Emma Anne Tate will also assign a number between one and one hundred. We will not consult or know what each other has assigned for a “score.” The total of our scores will be the score for the story. Highest score wins.

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Fear and Homelessness

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Hey everyone, It's been a REALLY long time since I posted a blog here, despite working on a lot of the things behind the scenes still but shit has become very different recently and I was urged to let yall know some of what's going on.

Currently, my little family is homeless. My wife, our son, and I are residing in a single hotel room with the help of an agency but we are only secure here till January 3rd as of right now. The agency might be able to help more, but we don't know yet.

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Just Wondering About the Time

 


Wondering about the time.

I've been trying to figure out what is the optimum time to post a story in BCTS. So I decided to use the time that BCTS uses, and post my stuff at 8 PM or thereabouts. But then I realized I didn't know what time zone BCTS uses.

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'Tis the season of giving, yada, yada...

And all I have is some pixels ... but it's the shape of the pixels that matters.
--
The lucky among us can send in some coins to keep BC "on the air".

I want to keep everybody here "on the air".

I really want to see all of you listed here in left and center of the home page. Seeing you get moved to "In Memorial" ... that just hurts. And it's really rough on you and your people ...

Or worse, you just go silent, and we never know ...

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You Y'all Lift Me Up!

First allow me to say this, Merry Christmas to y'all. This year has been a amazing, yes there were dark periods, periods of self doubt, periods when I felt like it was time to give up and retire and retreat into the darkness of the internet never to be seen nor heard from again. There were also times when I felt like I was on fire and the world of fiction was my oyster. Rambling aside, I want to thank every member of this site.

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The reason for the season………

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My wife and I had a nice dinner out this evening - December 25th is my youngest son’s fiancés birthday, so we all got together and surprised her with a dinner for her birthday at a nice local brew pub, Hank Hudson’s. We finally got to meet her parents (a very, very nice couple), and had a truly wonderful time. After, the two of us stopped and got a coffee, and then took a nice ride to look at all of the Christmas decorations - an annual tradition for us.

Without meaning to brag, the people at our house did a really spectacular job, lol.

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New Stories

Dear BigCloset readers,

I've recently posted some new stories to the site Tigger and I share. Go to www.tigger-n-brandy.net and follow the links.

Or . . . just wait a while. I'm trying to work out a way to get them posted here are BigCloset.

Brandy

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Maybe A Touch Early

It's already December 23 over here, so I wish all you adherents to Big Closet a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and, of course special thanks to Erin and our Admin staff.

I'm sure you will all join me in a huge round of appreciation for all their hard work in making sure that this site is the best place on the internet for folks like us. It's what they do behind the scenes that counts. Thankyou. May you enjoy next year as much as I think we, the audience,will.

Joanne

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It's Christmas.

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I don't know if others have noticed that when Christmas nears, we seem to have a series of disasters, usually earthquakes, aeroplane crashes or killings. I looked at the Guardian website and beside the awful murder of Brianna Ghey, there was a shooting of 14 or more in Prague, the murder of a little boy in London, the continued genocide in Gaza, Russian atrocities in Ukraine, the earthquake in China and so on.

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I am so sorry, everybody

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I need to apologise to anybody who got worried about my last post.

First a bit of an explanation. due to some passive-aggressive stuff by me, I ended up owing extra on my cable/internet bill, and could not pay it off this month.

I ended up rage-quitting with my provider, and then panicked that if I suddenly wasn't on for a while, people would worry about me.

instead, because all my manic energy turned into self-hate, my post was more likely to worry people.

I was already in the process of finding a new provider, so if there is a gap, it shouldn't be long.

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The sad case of Brianna Ghey

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In the UK the trial of the murder of a poor, shy trans girl was concluded recently.

Two seemingly normal 15-year-olds with no previous convictions planned to murder Brianna in February this year.

The whole story is so sad, it brings a tear to your eye when you read it. It does make you wonder what hope there is for humanity when there are children around like this.

What can possibly twist two young minds this way?

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Looking for a story

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I'm looking for a story that I probably read on this site.

Mankind has just started to get time travel reliably working. A university professors team goes back to France then England to do some research on an English war, maybe around the 17th or 18th century. One of the university techs pulls a stupid prank and has the professor, who will pose as the wife, materialize with HUGE breasts.

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Feeling a Bit Odd.

Looking at the story menu tonight, I am surprised at my own reaction to it. Referring to someone as a sissy is particularly off putting for me but talking about someone being feminized or even forcibly feminized is not. Odd that. This is in no way a criticism of others but simply refers to my own reaction to the word.

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Week of Flu

Well, it's been one of those un-fun weeks of dealing with Covid sweeping through everyone at work, and therefore also myself and those at home. Not a horrible case of it for me, fortunately, just mild fever for a couple days, sinus flooding before the rainbow when the clouds parted, and now slow recovery with instant exhaustion after doing anything.

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lost post

Author: 

Hi folks

I spent an hour doing a post earlier, hit the upload and now its gone. I can't be a@$d to try to recreate it

So the short is
i did stuff, theres stuff for you to read and i'll be doing more stuff.

ttfn

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Contest Update -- The Time Is Near At Hand!

"You have not yet begun your story." The Ghostly Author's countenance fell, and the air was filled with the acrid stench of unfinished tales. "Yet chance and favor may yet be yours."

"Now, Emma!" Scrooge scoffed. “I've got all the time in the world. I can't even post an entry until New Year's Day, and Valentine's day is weeks away!"

“It’s Sunday,” the Ghostly Author replied. “Do you know where your muse is?”

“Ah. Well. Errr. About that,” Scrooge temporized.

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I don't want to scare anybody

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I don't want to scare anybody, but I might just have a hope of being able to enter the new year's contest.

I have 400 words done, so I need to come up with another 2,100 words to qualify, so I might not make it.

But I figured I would warn you all anyway.

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Karen West

Well. I see the slime trolls have struck again. I presume our leadership will take down these badly done sales pitches for meds, probably from India from a few words I noted. I could be very wrong about that location. To the I charge script kiddies (how's that for an undeserved insult Piper?).......when I touched Karen's name, her page opened show casing the latest insults posted to her account. Is it possible for admin to over ride the account and delete these and the other similar posts that were made to the account in the past?

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Butterscotch on Kindle

I re-read Butterscotch on Kindle and loved it. Perhaps I read it the first time on BCTS years ago? It was quite entertaining and winsome. Things do not often turn out so well for folk like us but a bit of fantasy is quite welcome. I'd recommend this to anyone.

I never did find a way to leave a review on Amazon.

Gwen

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Life update: Kristine Roland -> Kristine Read

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Hello all, it's been quite a while since I have been on Big Closet regularly.

(I have maintained my hatbox membership though, because Big Closet needs to be here!)

The last time I posted any stories was in September of 2019.

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Need a Failure Icon

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Instead of blogging this for attention it would be great if there was a failure icon to leave the data or glitch we have run into. Let's get to the crux of what is probably my problem and no one else.
Try to link on messages and I receive.

Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.

This happens occasionally and it isn't that big of a deal. Sometimes it's because I have timed out and no longer logged in. So I tried to check if I was logged in and again received the same

Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.

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Entropy surrounds me

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A long time I created a character who was cursed with an entropy field, making everything around her fall apart or rot faster than would happen in nature.

Well, right now I feel like I've become that character.

My recliner has fallen apart, joining my laptop which no longer will close, and my car which has had a few "hiccups" lately.

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Family Business by Adrienne Nash

I read this book this week and thoroughly enjoyed it, it's only been published a week or two and it is up to date with Covid and the campaign against transwomen, including the note at the end of the book. It has excitement, some plausible characters and some very interesting elements about gender dysphoria.

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Wednesday Knights Needs Reviews!

I can say without ego that I'm very proud of what I accomplished with Wednesday Knights. I feel like it's the best story I've written -- which might not be saying much, but it is what it is.

A lot of people have told me they really liked it, or even loved it. Many people have said -- perhaps simply to make me feel good -- that they think it's one of the best stories they've read.

Honestly? I like hearing that, because it makes me feel like I'm growing as a writer.

But you know who else needs to hear that?

The people over on Amazon Kindle.

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A little spark of an idea

I was reviewing the Cynthia Chronicles, in particular, the readers' comments. Apparently, The Wizard's treatment of some of the adversaries bothered some of the readers. Anyway, my creative juices may have returned in a small quantity. We'll have to see.

Portia

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So………, apparently……….

Someone thinks I should try writing a story, and thank you JoanneBarbarella, I am flattered. I know this is in conjunction with the recent blog about trying to get new authors involved here, and I truly am stunned that anyone would approach me.

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Use of Real Name

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Suddenly there seems to be very strong pressure on the Internet to use my real name. It seems that almost no one on BCTS does that. Suddenly, about 2 hours ago Facebook is wanting me to make a new password. Not sure what is going on. Is there some sort of danger in my starting to use my real name on BCTS? I don't mind.

Gwen

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Trying Something New.

I've encountered a bit of writers block with How I Spent My Summer Vacaction: I became a Girl!. So in order to break that writers block I've decided to try something, something all writers did when I was starting out. Well writers in the Harvest Moon Community that is. Anyway, since Emily favorite gaming series is 'Star Dew Valley' a series of anime inspired farming simulator games that have some elements of JRPG's thrown in to spice things up, like upgrading your farming tools and building releationships with the locals, and an 'life bar'.

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Bored with TG Scene

While scratching away, vainly trying to write something intelligent, compelling and interesting, it comes to me that as far as TG, GID and all that, it feels like I've "Been there and done that". This is no reflection at all on the experience of anyone else. I've had over 70 years to think about, theorize and experience the whole of it, and as soon as I could took the plunge trying to make it all real. In some ways I had great success and in others it was disastrous. I'm sure that my suffering is typical of the usual T person, so I won't further traumatize you.

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(Soon) "How Gender Grows in the Brain" (Sun, Dec. 10, 2023)

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Hoping this talk will interest people here. I'll be there in-person,

Talk will be live-streamed on YouTube, and you can type in questions during the talk. Ask early, talks usually run only 45 minutes before Q&A starts.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1085829629094180

Note time is Chicago USA time, (UTC -6)

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dysphoria

so yesterday, my mom convinced me I needed a hair cut, as it was starting to go all over the place. Sadly, I just can't seem to have long hair, so I agreed, and got it done.

Since then, seeing my reflection has brought out my dysphoria, which only got added to today when my ex commented that I looked more like a man, more like the person I was before I started wearing women's clothes in public.

So I am really feeling ugly, and would appreciate any hugs anybody can spare.

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This is not right

For those like me who have been looking at a lot of best books lists in hope of finding something new, especially anyone looking at best fantasies. Most of them do get around to mentioning Tolkein eventually( He should be at the top) but I've seen no mention of what I think is the second best fantasy epic of the last century. Guy Kay Gavriel's Fionaver Tapestry. He draws together a vast range of folklore from across Europe in one masterful story. There is no trans content but has everything else you could want in a fantasy tale.

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Silver Bell Wish Chapter 2 is Now Up!

Part two of Silver Bell Wishes is now up!

Due to a slow connection and an itchy button-pressing finger, it got posted twice.

I hope the Admin will remove the second posting. I promise to be more patient with future postings

Peregrine

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Christmas.

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Christmas.

Christmas has always been a goodish time for me, decent ones as a kid, quiet, riotous or drunken ones as an adult. I like the time of year. Not the stress, the crowds or the harrying but the festiveness leading into the turning of the year.

This last year I have been climbing out of a deep pit (life, the universe and other things) back into living, and it is good’ish.

Plans for the future are being made, small ones and big target (but achievable) set.

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Any World (that I'm welcome in) by SammyC on Patreon

Is there a world somewhere for everyone?

anyworld-cov-001_1.jpg
Any World
(that I'm welcome in)
by SammyC
Read on Patreon

New serial by SammyC starting on Patreon, free for everyone to read.

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Dimelza Cassidy's Stories

I'm only the messenger here but anybody who has not read Dimelza Cassidy's stories does not know what writing is all about. They were originally posted here but have ended up on FM. Don't ask me why,Just read them and be thankful that they are still here.

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Fishing for ideas.

So, I've hit a bit of a stumbling block. And I was hoping the readership here could help me out. I have two possible ideas for a story, both are kind of beach themed. One centers on Persephone paiting the gulf coast red. The other be an intro for a new character, or feature Isabella. The first one is more, fun, adventure, slice of life, that flavored with anime and manga style humor. The other is dark, brooding and a bit scary, maybe even too scary.

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the weirdest day I have had in I don't know how long

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Okay so Mom and I went to get our laundry done today, despite still recovering from the flu.

We use a laundromat rather than the machines in our building, because they aren't all that good.

So we get there, get our loads started, and this gentlemen starts talking to my mom, because she mentioned living in the northern part of the province, and he apparently worked out there.

I swear, he was basically chatting her up, but I wasn't going to be a spoilsport and tell him to stop.

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Advice to Authors, being passed on

Advice for authors that I received and am passing on.

One of the best pieces I ever received was simple, a setting is not a plot.

It sounds odd, but it is true, you get an idea for a place, you detail it exquisitely, but people do not (generally) come out of the theatre quoting the scenery….

Yes knowing your background is important, knowing how a school is set up matters for a story set in a school, but unless you are very good, very weird or just odd (like me) the school is not the story, just the scenery.

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For Post Op MTF folk

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I had my Neo-Vagina installed in 2007 and for a decade it was fun. In the last few years it does nothing; worse than a dead fish. Er, it doesn't smell though. One thing that does happen is that at times, it feels like I am sitting on my penis, and when I am walking the feeling is stronger. There are no more Orgasms, and there are perhaps several reasons. I've got several conditions that are vying for the right to kill me. I am just wondering if any other Post op ladies can relate?

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A thoughtful article about transgender

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I found this interesting opinion piece on the New York Times Web site. I'm a subscriber, but if you're not, the site requires registration but otherwise is free: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/opinion/politics/life-without-regret.html

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Get Well Soon, Erin!

Because we need you ...
And I need you in particular, because there are books to be published and story ideas to be run up your flagpole ...
And Eric has almost finished my second book of western micro-novellas and it contains some of my best material that you and all the closeteers out there are going to just adore!
Hugs
Maryanne

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Looking for a story

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I'm looking for a story that was published on BCTS. It consists of about 3 or 4 volumes worth of story. In the first volume mankind has spaceships. The main character is a young man who is something like a janitor or maintenance person. The ship is attacked by monsters that turn crewmen into more monsters. But something different happens with this young man and he winds up turning into a young woman with powers to fight back. Many of the battles occur on the microscopic level as the populations of "good" creatures fight the populations of "bad" creatures.

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Sick

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I'm sick. It appears to be a simple cold, but it's been with me for five days. I'm going to try to get in to see a doctor today or, at least, get a covid test.

Things may be delayed around here for a bit.

Hugs to all,
Erin

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someone broke my car window - again

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So this morning when Mom and I went out to our car, we discovered someone had smashed in the driver's side window - for the 4th time since we moved in here.

I'm hanging in there, but hugs appreciated.

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my life so far, therapy in writing.

Reading a story here, that set me on trains of thought. The story had dark and light, but I identified with a bit I really do not like having identified with.

The idea of suicide by neglect. It rang true and hit home hard.

And a lot of the other issues about growing up and acceptance and self doubt etc.

So here is my story, not for enjoyment or sympathy but to see if I can put it into some semblance of order that makes sense to me. Some info will be relevant, some is just me hanging it into its place for me.

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