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I know the position you are in, I am in it too, and I have been for years. Let me do this for you. What I am about to give you is the full context of my experience with something that I have "carried" in my mind for the entire length of some 12 years. Each and every day since the age of 8, the context of this conversation has been a paramount concern in my mind - one of suffering if you will. I recognize that to you this may not be easily grasped - the magnitude of the emotion that I have carried with me, but I am confident that after relating it to you, it will all be of value.

Bear with me on this one, you're the first person with whom I have ever expressed this -- you should also know my reasons for doing so. They are selfish reasons, reasons which I recognize as being important to my values of integrity and nothing more. I am sharing this with you because I want you to know that you are not alone and that we never had to endure the suffering that we are experiencing. It wasn't necessary -- it never was. Let me begin:

I was enrolled in kindergarten at the age of four in a small town in Wyoming where my mother and I lived with her parents. It wasn't more than a few hundred people -- if that -- spread across a great expanse of land. There were two distinct families that I associated with at the time. One family was composed of three girls - one my age and the other two slightly older. The second was made of only a boy that was my age. I don't recall exactly how our relationship came into existence, but it did. Over a short period of time it evolved into something truly wonderful to all of us.

CONTINUE