@grammy82 - Tears again, "grammy" ... especially because the ONLY person who EVER listened to me and knew the players was my mother's mother - my grandmother - and she died in 1981, shortly after my first cross-country move.

So, your "handle", and what appears to be the year (19)82, so close to my own grandmother's departure, and your reading and understanding of what I wrote hits so close to "home".

I could go on - like why am I (still) crying (today) after struggling for 51+ years - since 9th grade or so - and it still cuts me to the core? and I still am finding myself alone? and to act otherwise is to deny my very own experience and its impact? How can I honor my otherwise silent struggle if I act as if I'm OK - esp. around people I would think would be the ones to care?
Believe me - and this is of no balm to my deep wounds - you wouldn't know it if you met me.

Thus the dichotomy of my dysfunction: it endures, I appear otherwise, I am in inner turmoil for its lack of resolution, or even for lack of its acknowledgment by the perpetrator - who I understand may even have been a victim herself of the only person who ever listened to me.

But, please, ...thank you @grammy82 .