Tom,

I know your pain, I have repressed memories from those many years ago and they come and go all of the time. I did have a period of success in my life where I was the best "in my own mind" but I was just kidding myself and making myself drive the memories deeper into my past by working to repress the memories. I would spend 14 hours a day at a job that I was only receiving 8 hours of pay for, therefore I was an over achiever, a work-a-holic, when in truth what I was doing is covering my pain by diverting my thoughts to work. Since my world is black or white, I learned to love details, and my goal was to be able to answer the questions of others with facts that were not contradictable. My answers had to be right and provable, to be proven wrong was a setback, so I cleared answers through asking questions of the experts then backing or disproving their impressions with documented facts. I had to be right!

The pain that we know is known only to each of us as "WE" see it. The same incident can have 50 different meanings for the 50 people who were involved. The proximity to the trauma only serves to increase the trauma in the eyes of those who were closest, while those who observed from a distance were still traumatized, but it is one of their "also ran" traumas for they were closer to different traumas, their traumas are our "also ran" traumas. The also ran traumas are there but not to the extent as the others but they can raise their ugly heads at the most inoportune times and paralyze us.

We learned love for our brothers, and we have stood by them. What we don't realize is that we go into a "survival mode" when the adrenalin kicks in when we are defending our brothers and our actions become bizare and overpowering to all of those who observe. We have the strength of four or five men and we will defend one against several without a thought for self. That stunns and shocks those who do not understand our trauma, "the protected / or the uninitiated", and causes fear in their hearts and those of the people around them. They then fear us more and all of the men who are like us. Again, we become labled and set aside, isolated into our own world, while we are struggeling and striving to escape THAT EXACT world in our efforts to return to normal. Forced into a mold by those who fear us for our responses to violence, and not by our abilities to resolve problems.

LOVE YA BROTHER, AND WE ARE GETTING OUR FAMILY BACK TOGETHER.

Dave