I read your comments and I appreciate your support. Your words eased my mind. Previously, as Ive told you, I’m coping and surviving. But old memories, old fears stir ruefully.

Am I of so little faith, you ask, that I spend life running scared? Yes, I’m scared - I stand alone – the memories are in my mind. I am the one who suffers. I am the one who has to cling to sanity. How can I not be anxious and scared? I am afraid of the past especially because of what is happening today. There are times when I just want to hide away, go-off somewhere but I can’t so I have to live and face up to them. I yearn sometimes for moments of quietness when my mind does not recall. Am I being foolish, as you’ve indicated? Even when my rational mind knows that it’s wrong to hold a fixed, negative image of what occurred, I frequently find that I’m carrying around a lot of inappropriate baggage. The past is a burden; a burden I’ve accepted but it brings me little pleasure and its weight sits heavily upon me.

I’ve settled fully into my life here and built a happiness that precludes the darkness of the past but still it is there always in my mind. It dulls me. It is as if a shadow hangs there, just out of range that slowly extends as the years pass. It lurks hidden but yet present, invisible to all – unseen and unheard, only present to myself. So it goes on, idyll and menace. The days blend one into another. Time seemingly moving forward unconcerned with the events of the morrow. Responsibility, burdens, fun, days, better days, worse days, days of action and more philosophical days – it all comes together.