gack. i have to get something out. i had a conversation with this guy i met online, and he sent me a link to a personality disorder test. from there we started talking about post traumatic stress disorder, and i said i had the symptoms of it but i'm not sure waht caused it. JOHN: well did you ever have a serious near death experience? ME: i think i know what it was ME: but it wasn't really traumatic ME: so i dont know JOHN: what are you thinking of ME: my parents used to fight and stuff ME: i dont know if thats really a trauma JOHN: like, verbally? ME: no ME: that too JOHN: oh, physically? ME: yeah JOHN: your dad hit your mom? ME: yeah JOHN: did he ever hit you? ME: no ME: i dont know JOHN: well, your dads a piece o' shit god dammit i spent so many years trying to force these things out of my head, and now i want to remember and i can't. I don't remember anything. I don't know how often it happened. I just remember one time, the day after, when i woke up my mom had left and she didn't come back until late that night. and i must have been 5? 6? 7? i don't know. I was really young, so it was easy to convince myself that it wouldn't happen again. And that these things happen to everyone. And i never gave it a second thought when my mom would tell me not to talk to my friends or my teachers about it the next day when she was helping me button my jacket. And i never gave it a second thought that it might be abnormal for a 7 year old to be nervous about leaving her parents home alone when she went out for a bike ride. and i hate how these things happen. I've only seen my mom cry twice, once when my dad hit her and once when she visited her mother's grave. And my dad is not a bad person, because people change. He's not a bad father, or anything. I don't know how these things happen to these people. My dad never hit my mom again. I don't remember when it stopped, or why. I was old enough to be scared, but my sister was really old enough to know what was happening. And she's never quite forgiven my dad, and she still hates him for it, and she's terrified of him. And i feel bad for it, because when we go out shopping, 9 times out of 10, on the car ride, my mom will start talking about my dad the way other people parents talk about soap scum. And my sister joins in, and they both get their feathers ruffled talking about how our grandparents swindle our money away, and hwo we're not rich in the first place and how our father can't afford to pay for his brother's daughter to go to canada to learn english. And all this stuff comes up, the smallest things that ever happened, and they make a difference. And we come home and my dad is upset because he knows what was happening, and he can't belive that we do this. And he can't believe that even me, his youngest daughter joined in, and I don't know whether to correct him and say i didn't join in, but i didn't want my mom to resent me either. And i don't like being caught in the middle of things. Because my mom doesn't want to divorce my dad, but it makes me disgusted because the only reason she's staying with him is because she wants me to go through college in a stable home. I am going insane. I wish i could remember these things, so i wouldn't have to rely on what other people tell me, or piece together the stuff that flashes through my head before i fall asleep at night.