I'm sorry but I don't have a great outcome story either, though perhaps it can be construed as a not-so-plucky tale of survival against all odds.
I reconnected with a childhood acquaintance (the daughter of a friend of one of my parents) a couple of years ago. I'd crushed on her when we were 14. Little did I know that would be her physical peak, because that year she was raped and began deteriorating. She never mentioned the rape to me, nor her catching her father in bed with another woman when she came home early from elementary school - probably because there were so many other tragedies which led to today's outcome to bring up. After a failed marriage at 27 she moved back for over 20 years with her mother, older brother and older sister into the childhood townhouse her mother got in a divorce settlement in 1971, and became anorexic. Several years ago her sister, a stunning teenager who became an overweight, middle-aged lesbian tabled by health complications, died on a living room cot, unwilling and unable to go on. A year later, her brother hung himself in his bedroom upstairs right next to her. Then a couple years later, just a couple of months ago, her mother was diagnosed with late stage terminal cancer and within two weeks also died on her living room cot. The townhouse title reverted in full to her estranged father given the settlement terms and rather than fight to live in a house where her entire family died within five years she chose to move out of state to her next nearest relative, a gay uncle. Initially she sounded suspiciously chipper given the change of venue but within a month she suddenly didn't answer my emails and calls and what I suspected might happen did - another failed suicide attempt, after many over the years. Still under a hundred pounds and suffering from fibromyalgia (among other things) she largely relies on her gay uncle, now in his eighties and ill equipped to deal with her issues. I'm currently dealing with those that I'm aware of behind the scenes with some of my newest friends, the kids of our collective aging parents. Funny how we hardly knew each other as children but given our parents and respective traumas they're friends now. Who knew that, gay or straight, we might be relying on each other in our dotage.
So smile. For those of you depressed by childhood molestation there may be even worse, far worse things - feel for this wounded bird and her uncle, your aged, gay brethren. I'm just a friend and I can't even look at a cat meme on here without being reminded that even her cats died on her these past few years. It's one of the reasons I rarely voice my own relatively minor personal complaints, life changes and health issues online and never wonder, whether I take an RJ break for several months or a weekend, why no member ever put out an APB thread on me.
