I feel a kinship on this site as we are all survivors. I have been on this site for less than 2 months and am surprised at myself that I have shared over 100 posts in which I have bared my soul more to this community than I have in "real life" to most people (A handful of people know my true history). While I feel a "kinship" and a camraderie on this site, I was surprised to learn that there are significant differences in how survivors interpret the impact of being raped and/or sexually abused. And, sadly for me, while I feel close to many posters on this site, no one here is someone I know personally - i.e. I do not know anyone from this site in my "real life". Conversely, in my real life, I feel pretty much friendless. I am blessed to be married, the father of two sons and grandfather of two grand daughters and one grand son. I have one surviving sister and one brother. I only recently told my sons and siblings about my CSA - I had temendous trepitdation about telling them - but I am so glad that I did and was so happily surprised that they believed me and still love me. Aside from this, though, no friends... I have work colleagues to whom I felt close, but no true friendships (I am retired although I work per diem occassionally - and everyone says how much they like me and commend me for my work, but still no real life friends). Anyhow, it is nice to meet new friends even if it is a "virtual" friend (someone we only know online). I consider all postings of support as well as testimonies of lived experience as signs of friendship. I know I am not alone in being an idealist - and the ideal I had for this site was that there should be harmony but have found out differently - and those differences allow us to grow in our mutual understanding and compassion for each other... However, it does hurt when others fail to believe us - especially when their disbelief is only due to the fact that we do not meet their preconcieved idea of how we should be who we are - and our sexuality is sometimes confusing to even ourselves and due to societal and "religious" influences, we sometimes reject ourselves and/or others -this should not be so - we should accept and love ourselves and, in turn, accept and love others. I start to hate myself when I see, for example, how long my postings (such as this one) become too long. Also, and more to the point, I feel I am only beginning to understand who I am as a sexual being without feeling guilt and shame about who I am. Thus, I firmly believe and strongly feel that we are compelled to accept and love others as they are - and to know that God loves us as we are - and this is often obscured by societal pressure and "religious" ignorance - even tragically sometimes, hatred/rejection by God professing people.