Louis, your plight, while you may have perceived it as such, was hardly unique. Try being reared in a state children's home/institution for fifteen of your early life, beginning at age two? Try being abandoned by both parents because you were the product of infidelity and had polio. Try growing up QUEER (not gay) in that facility by everyone. Try being molested by staff and student alike, and knowing the persons to whom you were supposed to report it were the very ones molesting you. Try having a Jewish mum and a Seminole father, making you not only a QUEER, but a QUEER MUTT who most deemed you their bitch. Try crying at night for your mother you never knew, let alone ever saw, though you did know she would never come. Try being beaten on a regular basis in that gawd-damned facility. Try attempting suicide multiple times as a youth (I was never allowed to be a child), but when you fail, you realize perhaps God does not even want you. And try surviving many things you cannot control, and still realize you are a survivor, a fighter, no matter how much negative diversity life has to throw.
I feel like Andy Dufresne, "...who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side." Life has many such rivers for us all. I was blessed enough to be a decent crawler who could hold my breath for a very long time.
Ok, Joninliverton - Now I am ready for that popcorn. None of that faux butter, please. Anyone have the jujubees?