I am soon to be 42 years old on September 24th of this year. I am divorced for 4 years now.  I have two children ages 21 and 18.  I was married for 17 years. My history is as brief as I can make it without too much unwanted detail.  I was molested at age 5 and at age 11. I was raped at 17 which was also my first experience "going all the way". The first boyfriend I had after that was physically abusive to me. I moved away after that to Pennsyvania where I live now. My first boyfriend here (also my ex-husband and father of my two children) was emotionally and mentally abusive to me.  I was financially dependent on him and being a child of divorce myself did not want my children to suffer the same as I did so I stayed in the marriage. It was not until one day when my daughter (at that time she was 16years old) told me that "she was not going to be like me when she grew up because her husband will never treat me like dad treats you!" that I realized staying in the marriage was actually hurting my children and causing them to lose respect for me rather than helping them in any way. In a nutshell my life has not been terrific.  My goals are to one day be financially, emotionally and mentally dependent upon myself.  I didn't even file for child support or monetary support for myself after the divorce because throughout our entire marriage all he ever seeemed to truly care about was money. I vowed that I would not take a dime from him and that if he loved it so much then he could just have it all. I was not in any emotional state to care about myself at the time.  All I wanted was to finally be free of his contstant control and criticism. To this day whenever he calls me my entire body just freezes and my blood pressure skyrockets so badly I don't even want to answer the phone.  So as you can imagine I have had a very rough time trying to carve out a new life for myself.  I don't dwell on the past consiously and I try to stay positive, but some where along this road I have been on I developed depression and bi-polar disorder along with several general health problems associated with stress and aging. Carving out a new life once seemed exciting but now its getting harder to see at all.  I have a new man in my life with his own set of problems but he is my best friend and we try to get each other over whatever bridges we encounter.  I hate to ask for help from anyone and just lately I had to ask my father to help me get a car so at least I could go back and forth to my doctors. In the meantime my Bob works every day of the week just to get us by.  We don't have credit card debt, we don't do drugs or drink alcohol and we don't cheat and steal.  We just have a high mortgage due to a refinancing scam that has taken us for virtually every dime we have and our lawyer can't seem to do anything about it.  We have faced getting turned down by other banks and mortgage companies because of this horrible company tacking on bogus charges upon bogus charges. We have tried Chapter 13 Banctruptcy but that does not help much because the house is all that we have and thats all we were trying to do is save our home.  We have 3 kids between us, two of which are going to college soon and my son who suffers from epilepsy and at 18 cannot even drive a car yet. Not only do I have to help myself get better but I have to find ways to get him to work and to his doctors appointments.  We have one large dog that you can't just take anywhere you go.  We can barely feed ourselves because the mortgage is so high. This is a 100 year old farmhouse and it needs so much work that I am afraid it won't even sell to get us out from under this madness.  So much for trying to start a new life, right? Anyhow, I just came upon this sight and decided to let it all out. I hope I haven't offended anyone here. Any help I can get would be greatly appreciated.  All I have to go on right now is my faith in god.  I'll keep praying, but I can't stop the crying. If you got this far in my letter then I thank you for allowing me to vent and I would be grateful even for your prayers.  Thank you, Lisa Simmons