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I talk to the same friend from yesterday pretty regularly. Recently we were talking about me learning to drive again, with her offering to help. One thing I have learned, which she confirmed, is that horrible discomfort and fear I felt then is normal, where most people still feel that way until a while after they have their license.

I know that now, but then I thought it was something wrong with me, and I said it was always easy for me to think that I was worse than everyone else. She said that was odd, because there are very few things I do worse than other people.

I know what she meant. I am competent in a lot of ways. Maybe I over-analyze, but I do figure things out that way. I still feel like there are things wrong with me that are not wrong with everyone else.

It does go back to that time. Why was I the one they picked on out of everyone else available? Was I the only one that would be a total joke? That's what it felt like. I am not impressed by the theory that the secretly wanted me, but it does seem feasible that the insecure base I was built on drew them to me. The last time I was groped, I was having a really insecure night; perhaps predators sense weakness.

If that insecurity that I carried into grade school and junior high with me made me a more attractive target, it also made it take a heavier toll. I don't think we should need extra reasons to be kind, or to not go out of our way to be cruel, but okay, here is one: You don't know the background against which your victim is hearing that "teasing".

What I heard was that I could never be loved, and it was against the background of being fat. In one way it was like the playground attack before - I did not understand that accepting abuse for a place in the circle was an option; I thought I was just out. It was different in that I was able to open myself up to friendship again. Romantically, I couldn't.

I don't know if that's because I was older, or I simply got lucky with friendship. It may just be that I handled the later event wrong. I compartmentalized in a big way. I cut off the romantic part of myself, and taking away the impossible part allowed me to function in other ways.

I'm not saying I did a great job of it. I would have stormy weekends about twice a year where I would just hate my family for not being there for me, or even really loving me. There were ways in which they could have been more supportive, but this was not their problem. I was a lot less open and trusting (which, incidentally, can make it hard for other people to know that their support is needed or how it is needed).

And I still liked boys all the time. But they couldn't like me back, so I couldn't like them that way. I became a very helpful person, assisting with homework and volunteering to decorate for dances and managing sports teams. It was gratifying, but I wasn't letting myself be a full person. It would have been perfectly normal to like boys, if I could have been a normal and acceptable girl. I was so sure I wasn't.

I am not completely sure now. Sometimes there were things that happened that were kind of like flirting, but it had to be just teasing, because no boy would ever see me that way. No boy actually asked me out, anyway. Maybe the sturdy walls were a problem, but there seemed to be plenty of corroboration that I was pathologically unattractive. So even when I was in love, I didn't say it.

That seemed like the only viable option. When I did let my guard down, thinking that I could love someone who could love me back, and finding out that I was horribly, horribly wrong, the only thing I wanted for six months was death. That I could have years ahead of that kind of emptiness and loneliness felt unbearable.

Except that I eventually pulled out of that, and I gained a greater perspective on what I had been doing wrong, and how I had let people I didn't even like define me. It was a step in healing.

So maybe if at some point I had taken a chance, and told Mike or O.B. "I love you", maybe they would have broken my heart, but maybe I would have healed then, and moved on, and become a normal relationship having person.

It seems equally possible that if I had entered a relationship at some point I would have been overly clingy or defensive or hurt him with sarcasm or done something else wrong, but then maybe I would have been less wrong the next time. I don't know; I only have now.

But the one thing that is very clear now is that if I want to be cherished - if when I am listening to myself and asking for what I need and that's the word that comes to mind - then I need to let myself be open to that.