Add my heartfelt sympathies to the pile and imagine giant basket of your favourite candies and comforts appearing out of nowhere for ya to ease your obvious pains.

Honestly, I wouldn't know how to handle myself if I was my parents weren't together and I had to meet and (possibly) play nice with the new girlfriend/boyfriend of the parent. I would probably do like you did and just try my damnedest to get along with the person, but I would have been a bit more "Look....I have done my best to get along, but I cannot accept or comprehend their behaviour" and "Sad as it is to say, I have serious questions about this new person in your life. I want you to be happy, but I just feel that there's a personality clash that's beeing overlooked."

Just remember: you don't get to choose who your family is, but you have all the choice of who you're friends with. Be supportive of your da and all that, but don't push yourself to let things slide just to maintain peace...it eventually bites ya in the bum really nicely ;)

BEB

My dear Jessica,

'Twas hard to read your blog without feeling immensely sad for you. :( Stuff that used to be between the lines, now oozes out at every turn. To leave you alone, with all your baggage to carry, emotional and otherwise, is there anyone in your family who even remotely cares for you?? :( But I totally broke down when I got to the last paragraph. Is this not astounding? You, my dear friend, so in need of but the slightest token of affection, or minimal token of appreciation, what is the first thing you do when you come home? You apologize, in advance, for not being able to write back all of us at once! And so, again, what's in-between the lines wins out, by far, to what you actually wrote in them! See, you can write about giving and giving; and this saddens me, because you get so little back; and it makes me happy to know you... because you get so little back! But what you simply ARE, and what you cannot ever hide being, that just radiates out of your blog! We have a well-know, and highly appropriate, word here to describe what you are: shiny!

See, this is the sorta thing I always talk about in my own blog. Why I have hope. I read your blog, and I know humanity, as a species, will make it. And you know why? The first rule of flying! Because you have Love! If you do all the math in the ‘verse, you'll find the 'verse should really be collapsing on itself, because there's no "logical" reason for you to be so giving when you receive so little. Don't make no sense. And yet you are! I think that's what Mal meant, when he said: "Love keeps her in the air when she autta fall down."

*hugs and love*

Glad to have you back darling. Sorry about all the suckage.

*Hugs Jessica*

Just keep flyin'