Introduction

Most people who were or are abused are always looking to the future, a better tomorrow, in the hope of finding happiness. A new experience, a new car, winning the lottery, or falling in love always seems to ease the pain and sadness, at least for a short period. At age fifty-two, I came to the realization that the future did not hold the answers I sought. Most of my future had already passed me by, and I had very little time left to try to find some form of happiness. It was then that I began to search my past for any answers that might be hidden, and it was in that past that I finally found the happiness and the comfort I had always sought.

Despite the years of verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse I suffered as a child, one evening I decided to sit down and try to make a list of the few positive things (if there were any) that happened during my childhood and as a young man. I was rather surprised when right before my eyes the list began to grow. Within days, the positive list far outweighed the negative list. I then began to wonder, If the positive list is fifty times longer than the negative list, why does the negative list hold so much power over me?

For days I pondered that thought.

While mowing the lawn early one evening, I began thinking about a painful incident that had happened to me on my first day at a new high school. As usual, the boys were inspecting the girls and the girls were inspecting the boys. While I was walking down the hallway, there were as many as ten girls who winked, batted their eyelashes, or smiled at me. I heard a couple of them whisper, 'He's cute,' or 'He's nice-looking.'

Just as I was about to enter my mechanical drawing cla