No they wouldn't. This path is sometimes a very hard and trying path. There's a lot of inner struggle to reach level ground and when finally you make some peace with the things that made you that way, that delicate balance - it's very easy to get knocked off kilter again by someone surprising you with the warm fuzzies. To be this way you have to develop a tough shell which is fine and dandy in everyday existance/difficult situations but in times when vulnerability is called for it is akward and hard to accept. It's like fighting against the thing you want because if you remove one brick from the wall, the entire wall crumbles which leaves you exposed to not just that person but in a lot of ways to a lot of things which can leave one feeling very terrified and lost. It's being less afraid of some slimy overlord than feeling vulnerable/placing your heart in someone else's care (which to people who went through this sort of traumatic upbrining where they can trust no one, rely on no one, and have no real model for vulnerabilty being anything more than a liability, of it being a safe place is excruciatingly difficult).

While my whole life I have been the envy of/and much respected by everyone who knows anything about me even to the point that people say they wish they could be like me, even *I* sometimes when I was first getting out of the situation would have perferred a much more normal, easier path. Now, I'm sort of philosophical about it all. I'm worked through most of it on my own and am a fairly happy individual but I'm not disillusioned, I still have a long way to go to emotional normalcy/trust. I do however understand that without what I went through I probably wouldn't be the same person that I am today and I probably wouldn't have a *need* to be that person either. It's a Catch 22. In some ways it has been a twisted blessing and at other times a wretched prison. But hey, that's life.

Grea.

: Steve Faust