E
Eja
Hello everyone. I just discovered this site a few hours ago and was shocked at how the people here were so receptive and understanding and how so many people who were suffering could just express themselves so openly. It's so different from the reality I live in. This place feels like a safe haven.
I'm 17. I'm a very introspective person, a great thinker of abstract things and I have a flair for literature. Or so that's what I like to tell myself. I don't know if that's really what I am, or if I became withdrawn after my traumas, or if it's just crap that other people have fed me. My dream is to become a Manga Artist, or a Manga writer with someone I can trust as an illustrator, though it's pretty embarrassing to say it out loud. I've loved Manga ever since I was a child, though I can't remember how much I read throughout my childhood. Manga, no matter what genre it is, just contains such wonderful elements that I could never find in my own life. I've been working really hard recently, poring over works by famed authors and artists and analyzing everything about what makes both the creator and the piece of work tick. However, that hasn't helped me much with the dread looming over my head constantly. Anyway, enough with the introductions.
So many things have happened. I've felt like my soul has been torn out forcefully over and over again, and I still feel it. I can't tell when all of it started happening. I can trace feelings of inadequacy, rejection and a sense of 'not being accepted for who I am' all the way back to when I was 4 or 5, maybe even 3. Things only got worse after I became an adolescent. I can't even say for sure what caused it all, though every time I start thinking 'nothing's gone wrong' I snap myself back to reality and with a bit of anger, recognize that there definitely IS something wrong within me, and that problem is the people around me. I think back when I was a kid I just wore a fake smile. Maybe that's why my parents go 'he was such a nice kid back then' and crap like that.
I can't trust anything outside my door (though I'm still optimistic enough that I can feel that not the entire world is bad). In the eyes of the people who live around me, I'm just a vulnerable rat for them to trap and torture for their own pleasure. It's sick. All the people around me just seem like sick freaks. And yet they get off calling me 'sick'. I've never actually been physically abused, but I feel as if I've been bullied my entire life, by everything around me. Reading about those who have been physically abused makes me feel kinda lucky in a way.
Right now my mother is an unsympathetic creature who gets angry at every little tiny thing (not all about me, mind you, but about little irritations in her own life) and who just seems to live for the sake of pointing out problems to make herself seem like some glorified, justified individual. (No matter how ridiculous, unprovable or incorrect something is.) Like she's great and the people around her all deserve to be put down just because she doesn't see eye-to-eye with them. She even just constructs some b*llsh*t scenario in her mind and finds things to point fingers at even when there's no evidence for it, or even if the proof of otherwise is right in front of her eyes. She's fantasizing and she's victimizing me for her own glee, trying to make me seem like some monster that's tormenting her, when ironically, she's the one living in her fantasies of inflated self-worth, tormenting me. All I'm doing is minding my own business, trying to do good by my own right. My father's not much better. He's not usually around, but when he is he just joins in the fake 'moral persuasion'. The two complement each other well. They're sick freaks riding on their high horses drunk on their arrogance and temerity. My brother seems to have picked up on the habit. They're all just trying to make everything around them look bad to give themselves some queer sense of relief from their own personal problems (which I suspect is an absence of self-worth, so they have to make themselves look good by making everything else look bad), all the while painting me as some horrific monster who isn't even human. Their attitude doesn't just stop at me, either. It seems like they look at everything else the same way. (Yelling, frowning or insulting anything that they don't agree with, as if everything has to please them.) What's crazy is that they'll do anything to get their satisfaction. I don't even want to have anything to do with them. "Let them do whatever they want, just don't get close to me" is what I think. These sick 'parents' removed the doorknob on my door while I was out one day and replaced it with a doorknob that has no lock. Now they just bust open the door (brother included) and yell at me for no concrete reason. It's absurd. The intrusion of 'boundaries' or 'rights' is simply unjustifiable. My own room doesn't even feel safe anymore. The harassment never ends. The loneliness is unbearable.
When I was child not even my parents saw me as someone with their own will, their own individuality, to be respected. It was like they just had me to fulfill some kind of generational doctrine, something like "you must turn your children into the same kind of mindless idiot who can't think and who can only work their ass off at a desk for no particular reason so that your children's children will be f**ked up in the same way, all the way through the family tree." It feels like they just saw me as some object to be molded into some specific shape, never caring about who I really was. Never loving me as a person, as their son. Just being parents for the sole reason of adhering to some ridiculous ideal. Between not giving a damn unless I follow some prescribed life path and using me for their own sick purposes of deriving relief for their own self-worth issues, I don't even know if where I live has anyone sane. They never taught me any real life lessons. They never taught me how to be a proper human. They were never proper examples of good people. I gained all my morals and values from things like books and Manga. In my early life I believed my brother was the same as me, but then he just became the same kind of person as them just to escape from the problems that he gained. It's all a vicious cycle.
I've never had a worthwhile friend my entire life. Anyone I meet just seems to see past me. Then they act however they want, never for anyone's sake, in their callous ways, as if telling me that 'if you don't join in you're not one of us'. Throughout my entire life it was always either this kind of friend or one that just took advantage of me for their own pleasures. No, I don't mean rape or molestation. More like how they just saw me as a figure that would give them an entertaining time, not giving a damn about what my position as 'friend' meant to them. As such, I've never met anyone that I would do all in my power to help, to make happy. I believe myself to be a loyal friend. But I am not a doormat. Once again, the dehumanizing aspect is present. I cut off my ties to all my existing 'friends' a year ago because I knew that the relationships weren't getting anywhere.
It doesn't just stop at my family and friends either. The place where I grew up in, and the place where I still live, is absolutely filled to the brim with people like my parents. It's a hellhole. There's no one I can trust, no one physical I can turn to because I don't even know if they know what it means to be human. All my life I just feel like I've been betrayed over and over again. There have been countless instances where my own existence, my own mind, my 'self', felt jeopardized. I can't even describe some of them. I think I'm trying my hardest to lock it away. I once thought about how the society I lived in was a hive of insects, and how everyone wanted me to be the same kind of insect. Now I know this might just seem like "the rat race", but the people around me are less than human. It's the kind of place where pretty much everyone you bump into lives for bullying others, depriving them, taking advantage of their vulnerability, and throwing them in a corner after they're done sucking out all the joy in your life to replenish their own (which, ironically, isn't even real joy). I'd sooner kill myself than become someone like that. It's happened so many times that I've given up hope of encountering anyone that is truly empathetic. Everyone who involves themselves with me personally just wants to turn me inside out. It's like an insidious corruption. It's crazy but it's like they're all chanting "you will be one of us". Someone said to me one day "if you can't beat them, join them". Hell no. That was a trigger. It made me hyper-vigilant about not submitting to their ways. It seems like a society that operates on the basis of "the bullied becoming the bullies". At school, at anywhere, it's all the same. The adults, the 'models', they're all the same kind of sick freak. Then they look at me as if I were crazy when I refuse to be like them, they cast me out or they bring me to some "child help center" with "certified psychiatrists", who are all the same. It's disgusting. They intrude, they deprive, they kill people's futures and selves, all for the sake of gaining some meager pleasure for staving off reminders of their own pathetic state, and proving that they are somehow better for not treating someone like a real human. They're like cheap drug addicts.
A few months back things got really intense. I was in some kind of 'phase', being really confused about everything and lashing out at anything that triggered memories and flashbacks about my past. I started feeling like I had to stand up for myself, had to make all the bullying, all the mental abuse stop because I wasn't guilty of anything. Because I knew that saying anything to her verbally wouldn't do jack sh*t, I started (cowardly?) writing notes and letters to her addressing her problems and how I really wanted her to stop giving me such a hard time. The result? It didn't do jack sh*t either. It was like her brain's incapable of processing any kind of moral appeal. Then I got really pissed. One day while she was just doing her usual rounds of nonsensical yelling I just walked up to her and slapped her. It was my way of telling her that enough was enough. (Was I wrong to have slapped her? I keep asking myself that.) What happened next? She called the goddamn police and the mental hospital. No one understood a thing. Every damn person was of the same mindset. They don't believe a thing I say. They exaggerate events and dramatize everything with me as the monstrous villain and that mother as the victim. They locked me up for two weeks with some real crazies (though I don't know to what extent this is true, given how the 'nurses' were tying people up just because they had the power to, chuckling to their colleagues) while the arrogant doctors insisted on calling me someone with schizophrenia and 'dangerous impulses'. I kept telling them what really happened. They seemed to perform some mental acrobatics and convinced themselves that only their opinion, their flawless 'diagnosis' was correct. I don't even know how I managed to get through that phase. I had to act all mild-mannered and put on fake smiles, or they'd tie me to a bed and sedate me for speaking out against the injustice. Since being 'normal' to them means being a submissive, dumb ape (who nonetheless acts in the same unhealthy, abusive way) I had to act all passive, deceiving where I could, keeping to myself where I could not. They're so sick that even when I try to talk in a more dynamic manner (slipping in deprecating jokes about how they were running things, being rhetorical about their own shortcomings and misgivings) they seem to think that it's 'wrong' and that I'm 'angry' and 'unhealthy'. I wanted to puke my guts out. They were clearly just so drunk on their own dumb arrogance that someone who just wanted to match their verbal power in conversation was seen as 'dangerous' to them. They want everyone who opposes anything about them beaten to a pulp (mentally). I was released two weeks later, though it didn't mean much. Things weren't any better (they just got even worse), although I wasn't stuck in an asylum. (I might as well be imprisoned anyway, being stuck in a place like this.) The reason for my release? I was being good and 'cooperative'. Absolutely nothing related to my problems or my mental state. They really just want to subjugate everything. I lost all my trust in doctors and psychiatrists after this. Not that I had much trust in anything ever since I was 12 or so.
Now I've gone back to my usual routine. I've applied for university and I've gotten in. The bad memories just don't stop. Every night is torture. And I can't leave and move straight to that country where my university is in because I have no control over me traveling internationally. I'm due to get there in a month but each day is unbearable. And my parents control everything that will allow me to leave on my own accord. I can't depart early, I can't escape. This place I'm stuck in is exactly a cage of concrete towers. And once I go there, I have no guarantee I'll meet someone who really cares about me...
Because pretty much the entire environment I live in is against me, pretty much everything that I look at is a trigger. It's inescapable and I feel like I'm suffocating, being dragged under, every day. I hate this cage. I hate looking at the same triggers everyday. I hate making some serious headway into my studies and research only to have it all crashing down when 'my own family' throws open the door and invades my personal space. I can hardly ever sleep. Every night is a battle. I just lie tossing and turning for at least 4-5 hours, trying to suppress the horrible things that just rush at me without end before I eventually get so exhausted I fall asleep anyway. The silence, the darkness of night makes it even worse. And that's only when it's 3 or 4am. Before that my mother's either blaring the TV or people are just trodding about noisily, talking in their abrasive, intrusive manner. (Triggers, triggers, triggers) Last night the flashbacks got so intense I escaped to a sort of trance state where I looked at everything as if I were back to that innocent, guileless child...
Now my mother is using my current state of keeping to myself as fuel for her persecutions. She still finds some absurd reason to call me 'sick' and label me as someone who 'still needs help'. The damn doctors prescribed some schizophrenic pill as if I were some crazy who couldn't control myself. I've been secretly throwing my pills out the window or flushing it down the toilet discreetly. Seems like everyone is only content once I've been drugged into a drooling, submissive idiot. My mother arranged for some 'checkup' with the doctors tomorrow because what I am is apparently 'not up to expectations'. She loves doing things that put me in a position of non-existent personal power behind my back. I'm so, so scared of what the 'doctors' might do to me. I do not want my mind to suffer any further. I just can't escape from the traumas, and new ones are being introduced every single day. I'm writing this because the fear of what will happen tomorrow is killing me. Even if nothing's really going to happen to me, it's a new trauma that is simultaneously a trigger for a past trauma (that's being repeated again and again). I'm sick of this feeling of having my mind, heart and soul wrenched out. I'm sick of putting on a fake face, of acting like the disgusting 'normal people'. I've been feeling this suffocation for years now. I just want it all to stop. I just want someone to care about who I am. I just want reassurance that there are people out there who are different, different from the freaks I've seen all my life. I need help. I want help, but there's no one to turn to. I just want to be successful...
I've been writing this since 11pm. It's now almost 4. The fear was too much for me to handle, so I decided to just lay everything out. If anyone can suggest something that I could do to help myself, I'd be extremely grateful. I just want all this to stop. I don't want to think about tomorrow. It's like a black ink blot. A black ink blot that threatens to smother my heart and strangle me forever.
Sorry for the absurdly long post and the walls of text. I didn't intend to create a story. I've just been keeping it all bottled for so long, and now I've found this place... If it seems like I'm taking advantage of your generosity, I'm sorry. I'm new to this forum thing. I hope I haven't broken any rules.
I'm 17. I'm a very introspective person, a great thinker of abstract things and I have a flair for literature. Or so that's what I like to tell myself. I don't know if that's really what I am, or if I became withdrawn after my traumas, or if it's just crap that other people have fed me. My dream is to become a Manga Artist, or a Manga writer with someone I can trust as an illustrator, though it's pretty embarrassing to say it out loud. I've loved Manga ever since I was a child, though I can't remember how much I read throughout my childhood. Manga, no matter what genre it is, just contains such wonderful elements that I could never find in my own life. I've been working really hard recently, poring over works by famed authors and artists and analyzing everything about what makes both the creator and the piece of work tick. However, that hasn't helped me much with the dread looming over my head constantly. Anyway, enough with the introductions.
So many things have happened. I've felt like my soul has been torn out forcefully over and over again, and I still feel it. I can't tell when all of it started happening. I can trace feelings of inadequacy, rejection and a sense of 'not being accepted for who I am' all the way back to when I was 4 or 5, maybe even 3. Things only got worse after I became an adolescent. I can't even say for sure what caused it all, though every time I start thinking 'nothing's gone wrong' I snap myself back to reality and with a bit of anger, recognize that there definitely IS something wrong within me, and that problem is the people around me. I think back when I was a kid I just wore a fake smile. Maybe that's why my parents go 'he was such a nice kid back then' and crap like that.
I can't trust anything outside my door (though I'm still optimistic enough that I can feel that not the entire world is bad). In the eyes of the people who live around me, I'm just a vulnerable rat for them to trap and torture for their own pleasure. It's sick. All the people around me just seem like sick freaks. And yet they get off calling me 'sick'. I've never actually been physically abused, but I feel as if I've been bullied my entire life, by everything around me. Reading about those who have been physically abused makes me feel kinda lucky in a way.
Right now my mother is an unsympathetic creature who gets angry at every little tiny thing (not all about me, mind you, but about little irritations in her own life) and who just seems to live for the sake of pointing out problems to make herself seem like some glorified, justified individual. (No matter how ridiculous, unprovable or incorrect something is.) Like she's great and the people around her all deserve to be put down just because she doesn't see eye-to-eye with them. She even just constructs some b*llsh*t scenario in her mind and finds things to point fingers at even when there's no evidence for it, or even if the proof of otherwise is right in front of her eyes. She's fantasizing and she's victimizing me for her own glee, trying to make me seem like some monster that's tormenting her, when ironically, she's the one living in her fantasies of inflated self-worth, tormenting me. All I'm doing is minding my own business, trying to do good by my own right. My father's not much better. He's not usually around, but when he is he just joins in the fake 'moral persuasion'. The two complement each other well. They're sick freaks riding on their high horses drunk on their arrogance and temerity. My brother seems to have picked up on the habit. They're all just trying to make everything around them look bad to give themselves some queer sense of relief from their own personal problems (which I suspect is an absence of self-worth, so they have to make themselves look good by making everything else look bad), all the while painting me as some horrific monster who isn't even human. Their attitude doesn't just stop at me, either. It seems like they look at everything else the same way. (Yelling, frowning or insulting anything that they don't agree with, as if everything has to please them.) What's crazy is that they'll do anything to get their satisfaction. I don't even want to have anything to do with them. "Let them do whatever they want, just don't get close to me" is what I think. These sick 'parents' removed the doorknob on my door while I was out one day and replaced it with a doorknob that has no lock. Now they just bust open the door (brother included) and yell at me for no concrete reason. It's absurd. The intrusion of 'boundaries' or 'rights' is simply unjustifiable. My own room doesn't even feel safe anymore. The harassment never ends. The loneliness is unbearable.
When I was child not even my parents saw me as someone with their own will, their own individuality, to be respected. It was like they just had me to fulfill some kind of generational doctrine, something like "you must turn your children into the same kind of mindless idiot who can't think and who can only work their ass off at a desk for no particular reason so that your children's children will be f**ked up in the same way, all the way through the family tree." It feels like they just saw me as some object to be molded into some specific shape, never caring about who I really was. Never loving me as a person, as their son. Just being parents for the sole reason of adhering to some ridiculous ideal. Between not giving a damn unless I follow some prescribed life path and using me for their own sick purposes of deriving relief for their own self-worth issues, I don't even know if where I live has anyone sane. They never taught me any real life lessons. They never taught me how to be a proper human. They were never proper examples of good people. I gained all my morals and values from things like books and Manga. In my early life I believed my brother was the same as me, but then he just became the same kind of person as them just to escape from the problems that he gained. It's all a vicious cycle.
I've never had a worthwhile friend my entire life. Anyone I meet just seems to see past me. Then they act however they want, never for anyone's sake, in their callous ways, as if telling me that 'if you don't join in you're not one of us'. Throughout my entire life it was always either this kind of friend or one that just took advantage of me for their own pleasures. No, I don't mean rape or molestation. More like how they just saw me as a figure that would give them an entertaining time, not giving a damn about what my position as 'friend' meant to them. As such, I've never met anyone that I would do all in my power to help, to make happy. I believe myself to be a loyal friend. But I am not a doormat. Once again, the dehumanizing aspect is present. I cut off my ties to all my existing 'friends' a year ago because I knew that the relationships weren't getting anywhere.
It doesn't just stop at my family and friends either. The place where I grew up in, and the place where I still live, is absolutely filled to the brim with people like my parents. It's a hellhole. There's no one I can trust, no one physical I can turn to because I don't even know if they know what it means to be human. All my life I just feel like I've been betrayed over and over again. There have been countless instances where my own existence, my own mind, my 'self', felt jeopardized. I can't even describe some of them. I think I'm trying my hardest to lock it away. I once thought about how the society I lived in was a hive of insects, and how everyone wanted me to be the same kind of insect. Now I know this might just seem like "the rat race", but the people around me are less than human. It's the kind of place where pretty much everyone you bump into lives for bullying others, depriving them, taking advantage of their vulnerability, and throwing them in a corner after they're done sucking out all the joy in your life to replenish their own (which, ironically, isn't even real joy). I'd sooner kill myself than become someone like that. It's happened so many times that I've given up hope of encountering anyone that is truly empathetic. Everyone who involves themselves with me personally just wants to turn me inside out. It's like an insidious corruption. It's crazy but it's like they're all chanting "you will be one of us". Someone said to me one day "if you can't beat them, join them". Hell no. That was a trigger. It made me hyper-vigilant about not submitting to their ways. It seems like a society that operates on the basis of "the bullied becoming the bullies". At school, at anywhere, it's all the same. The adults, the 'models', they're all the same kind of sick freak. Then they look at me as if I were crazy when I refuse to be like them, they cast me out or they bring me to some "child help center" with "certified psychiatrists", who are all the same. It's disgusting. They intrude, they deprive, they kill people's futures and selves, all for the sake of gaining some meager pleasure for staving off reminders of their own pathetic state, and proving that they are somehow better for not treating someone like a real human. They're like cheap drug addicts.
A few months back things got really intense. I was in some kind of 'phase', being really confused about everything and lashing out at anything that triggered memories and flashbacks about my past. I started feeling like I had to stand up for myself, had to make all the bullying, all the mental abuse stop because I wasn't guilty of anything. Because I knew that saying anything to her verbally wouldn't do jack sh*t, I started (cowardly?) writing notes and letters to her addressing her problems and how I really wanted her to stop giving me such a hard time. The result? It didn't do jack sh*t either. It was like her brain's incapable of processing any kind of moral appeal. Then I got really pissed. One day while she was just doing her usual rounds of nonsensical yelling I just walked up to her and slapped her. It was my way of telling her that enough was enough. (Was I wrong to have slapped her? I keep asking myself that.) What happened next? She called the goddamn police and the mental hospital. No one understood a thing. Every damn person was of the same mindset. They don't believe a thing I say. They exaggerate events and dramatize everything with me as the monstrous villain and that mother as the victim. They locked me up for two weeks with some real crazies (though I don't know to what extent this is true, given how the 'nurses' were tying people up just because they had the power to, chuckling to their colleagues) while the arrogant doctors insisted on calling me someone with schizophrenia and 'dangerous impulses'. I kept telling them what really happened. They seemed to perform some mental acrobatics and convinced themselves that only their opinion, their flawless 'diagnosis' was correct. I don't even know how I managed to get through that phase. I had to act all mild-mannered and put on fake smiles, or they'd tie me to a bed and sedate me for speaking out against the injustice. Since being 'normal' to them means being a submissive, dumb ape (who nonetheless acts in the same unhealthy, abusive way) I had to act all passive, deceiving where I could, keeping to myself where I could not. They're so sick that even when I try to talk in a more dynamic manner (slipping in deprecating jokes about how they were running things, being rhetorical about their own shortcomings and misgivings) they seem to think that it's 'wrong' and that I'm 'angry' and 'unhealthy'. I wanted to puke my guts out. They were clearly just so drunk on their own dumb arrogance that someone who just wanted to match their verbal power in conversation was seen as 'dangerous' to them. They want everyone who opposes anything about them beaten to a pulp (mentally). I was released two weeks later, though it didn't mean much. Things weren't any better (they just got even worse), although I wasn't stuck in an asylum. (I might as well be imprisoned anyway, being stuck in a place like this.) The reason for my release? I was being good and 'cooperative'. Absolutely nothing related to my problems or my mental state. They really just want to subjugate everything. I lost all my trust in doctors and psychiatrists after this. Not that I had much trust in anything ever since I was 12 or so.
Now I've gone back to my usual routine. I've applied for university and I've gotten in. The bad memories just don't stop. Every night is torture. And I can't leave and move straight to that country where my university is in because I have no control over me traveling internationally. I'm due to get there in a month but each day is unbearable. And my parents control everything that will allow me to leave on my own accord. I can't depart early, I can't escape. This place I'm stuck in is exactly a cage of concrete towers. And once I go there, I have no guarantee I'll meet someone who really cares about me...
Because pretty much the entire environment I live in is against me, pretty much everything that I look at is a trigger. It's inescapable and I feel like I'm suffocating, being dragged under, every day. I hate this cage. I hate looking at the same triggers everyday. I hate making some serious headway into my studies and research only to have it all crashing down when 'my own family' throws open the door and invades my personal space. I can hardly ever sleep. Every night is a battle. I just lie tossing and turning for at least 4-5 hours, trying to suppress the horrible things that just rush at me without end before I eventually get so exhausted I fall asleep anyway. The silence, the darkness of night makes it even worse. And that's only when it's 3 or 4am. Before that my mother's either blaring the TV or people are just trodding about noisily, talking in their abrasive, intrusive manner. (Triggers, triggers, triggers) Last night the flashbacks got so intense I escaped to a sort of trance state where I looked at everything as if I were back to that innocent, guileless child...
Now my mother is using my current state of keeping to myself as fuel for her persecutions. She still finds some absurd reason to call me 'sick' and label me as someone who 'still needs help'. The damn doctors prescribed some schizophrenic pill as if I were some crazy who couldn't control myself. I've been secretly throwing my pills out the window or flushing it down the toilet discreetly. Seems like everyone is only content once I've been drugged into a drooling, submissive idiot. My mother arranged for some 'checkup' with the doctors tomorrow because what I am is apparently 'not up to expectations'. She loves doing things that put me in a position of non-existent personal power behind my back. I'm so, so scared of what the 'doctors' might do to me. I do not want my mind to suffer any further. I just can't escape from the traumas, and new ones are being introduced every single day. I'm writing this because the fear of what will happen tomorrow is killing me. Even if nothing's really going to happen to me, it's a new trauma that is simultaneously a trigger for a past trauma (that's being repeated again and again). I'm sick of this feeling of having my mind, heart and soul wrenched out. I'm sick of putting on a fake face, of acting like the disgusting 'normal people'. I've been feeling this suffocation for years now. I just want it all to stop. I just want someone to care about who I am. I just want reassurance that there are people out there who are different, different from the freaks I've seen all my life. I need help. I want help, but there's no one to turn to. I just want to be successful...
I've been writing this since 11pm. It's now almost 4. The fear was too much for me to handle, so I decided to just lay everything out. If anyone can suggest something that I could do to help myself, I'd be extremely grateful. I just want all this to stop. I don't want to think about tomorrow. It's like a black ink blot. A black ink blot that threatens to smother my heart and strangle me forever.
Sorry for the absurdly long post and the walls of text. I didn't intend to create a story. I've just been keeping it all bottled for so long, and now I've found this place... If it seems like I'm taking advantage of your generosity, I'm sorry. I'm new to this forum thing. I hope I haven't broken any rules.
