"I am the youngest of five children. My father was a military man, very strict (we even had inspections....I can remember standing next to my bed at 3 waiting while he checked out my room). He was an alcoholic, very violent (especially to my mom).

My oldest brother died when he was three (strangulation on his bunkbed). My mother blamed herself and I believe my father blamed her. I don't think either of them was ever the same after that.

Finally when I was 8, we left in the middle of the night to get away from my dad. We went to my mom's parents (who were wonderful, caring people), but my mom began drinking and abusing drugs to deal with her depression. She went in a psychiatric ward, where she met my 1st stepfather (also an alcoholic). They married when I was 11 and we moved away from my grandparents. Their relationship was rocky to say the least, and one day we came home from the zoo....he was dead. They had fought earlier in the day and she said she was leaving him...he couldn't take it, so he committed suicide. I blamed my self, because I had never accepted him. My mother again blamed herself and the next few years she was in and out of hospitals, we were on welfare, moved alot.

When I was 14 I went into a foster home (my sibs were on their own) and my mom was in a state hospital...she had attempted her life many times by now. I stayed with the the family a year, one of the most stable of my life and then was moved to a cousin and her family, because the state thought it was best if I was with family. Little did they know...raging alcoholics, violence, I slept with a hammer under my bed

When I was 16, I was placed back with my mother, I spent the next two years moving with her, having police raid our house for drug dealing, fighting off advances from her drunk boyfriends, and somehow getting myself through high school. A month after graduation, I moved to L.A. to get away from the drugs and chaos and instead spent a year there drinking and doing drugs.

When I was 19 I came back to Mass. and accepted the Lord. I went to Bible College to become a missionary, but while there became severely depressed. I attempted suicide when I was 22, my roomates found me. I never went back to school.

When I was 23, I met my now husband at work (he was an alcoholic, married and abusive). I've been with him ever since, it was all I ever knew.

Since then:

I have been hospitalized 4 times for my own depression.

Dealt with various problems with my husband and 3 stepchildren: drugs, alcohol, violence in the home, etc.

In 97 cared for my mom who had cancer and died next to me. The good thing that came out of her being sick (if there can be such a thing), is I forgave her and we got close.

Recently I started having flashbacks of my dad, in regards to molestation, but that is all I want to say about that.

I hope I can get better, I hope I can learn to like myself and live a better life then my mother. I'm 36 and I want something better. I know this was extremely long, but it is my story."

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