especially if it is written by a teenager. Because how many "adults" are writing in about their alcoholic or abusive spouse/boyfriend/friend? And why is it that they got themselves into that situation to begin with? Most likely low self-esteem and thinking that one person is going to make their life better, not paying attention to the fact that one person can ruin your life. Only we can make our lives better.

Now is the time, when you're young, to make a life for yourself, to learn about self-respect, to get yourself on to a good path, not a bad one. If you're unhappy unless you're with someone, something's WRONG and you need to go back to the drawing board, get help, be alone and get your own self to a good place.

I think this is a very important letter.

but it seems like some of you writers are ALL about getting published, accepted, appreciated and into the limelight. Do you actually enjoy what you are doing? How many artists, actors, musicians are out there who are not making it big time?

I'm not going to tell you what i think you should do. I'm just going to say that I too fell in love with an alcoholic "in denial". There are a lot more issues that go along with alcoholism - insecurity, dishonesty, selfishness - to name a few - and while my heart was breaking and I was trying to hang in there, I became more and more tangled in the web of his disease. It has been a while now but my heart is still broken and I am still not healed. My confidence is low, I have anger and I find to hard to trust myself or anyone else. It is a messy business cleaning up those strands of sticky, tenacious stuff but it was absolutely necessary and I'll get there. You will figure out what you need to do, but it will not be easy. Take care of yourself. Cary is right.

After I had the tumor yanked off my pancreas, the PA asked me if I'd like to see the CT scan that was THE one that gave the green light to go ahead and operate. Well, it was really a yellow light. Three top radiologists at Johns Hopkins stood around and scratched their heads, tossed coins, rock-paper-scissor-ed, and voted - 2-1 - to go ahead. When I saw the famous CT scan, there seemed to be about 12 kind of murky pale gray "areas" just like the one she pointed to and told me was "the one" they were all mumbling and grumbling about. Thank god! I'd had endoscopic ultrasound, another CT, an octreotide scan, an MRI, and a liver/spleen scan - all to find the little bugger! Thinking of you Cary in that bizarre place that is the world of medicine. Best of luck. Be patient.