12:45 p.m.  Adult Children of Alcoholics meets tonight at 5:45 p.m.  I am just waiting to go there.  Ugh!  I feel so sick about the recent death of my brother.  I went to church yesterday and it was a great Bible study, very complex.  My life is good, stress-free and orderly.  That is because I have worked so hard for the last ten years to create the "new normal" after I had to leave my cruel family.  The only threat that faces me is if I reconnect to my family now that my brother has died. …

I had rescued myself from my cruel and evil family with a great deal of help from professionals and fellow sufferers.  For five years I had nightmares of returning to the abusive situation.  The nightmares had my brother beckoning me with my sister sneering in the background.  In these dreams I was always offered a place to stay, under a leaky faucet or in a tiny dirty room away from the group of fornicators.  When I first learned of my brother's death I incorrectly assumed that he was with…