Wonderful, Hope! thank you! I appreciate your response, I am almost overwhelmed by the positive reaction that my post garnered! As far as writing a book is concerned, the only thing standing between it and you is yourself and a whole crap load of free time and in my case cartons and cartons of cigarettes! So...do it! I really have had a blast writing this thing i would recommend it to anyone. Hell, my mom is writing a book! its funny how many people are, i am a testament to the fact that everyone and his mother is writing a book! Anywho... so Anthony, and everyone else, I have a little thing that i would like to try and clear up. I found this on, lets see...on the Tilted Forum project (Don't really know, it came up on a random search) and it has to do with scratching. In my case, or Jack's rather, he does it mostly while asleep and it is more like raking his skin rather than the itching made popular by Dave Chappelle's character "Tyrone Biggums" so here goes and please tell me if this next section is accurate...
"My friend has been going through a lot lately, and she was raped. She was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One night she realized that she hadn't had her period since the rape, and thought she was pregnant, but this turned out to be because of the drug they put her on.

She's already seeing a therapist, but I've also been trying to help her through this. The problem is, after the incident with her period, she started scratching herself really bad at night. She filed her nails down and bandaged her hands, but sometimes the bandages come off. She can only see the therapist once a week, and it's getting worse. Yesterday her neighbor woke her from her nap by banging on her door and the front of her shirt was covered in blood because she scratched herself so hard. The therapist said that it's probably because she's subconsciously punishing herself for something.

Her dad abused her when she was young, he beat her pretty badly, and so she has a tendency to blame herself for everything - including the rape.


That's pretty much a nutshell, but I'm hoping someone with some experience can please give me some advice, because this is killing me too.

Thanks so much for taking your time to read this."

You know, for a few brief moments there i forgot what that part said. (Sigh) tough to read. well, that should do it for now. thanks, everyone...
Matt