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I'm seventeen and-one-half, and am presently on summer break from the seond most liberal university on the west coast. I have a twin brother, two parents who are still married to each other, and a golden retriever. My parents are good people, if occasionally odd, preoccupied, and/or misguided. My twin brother and I were close allies for about the first six years of our lives. We were then each others' worst enemies. We're back to being allies. I play the piano and violin, and I dive and hurdle. I haven't yet competed in diving or hurdling at the intercollegiate level, but neither have I ruled it out. My life was pretty ordinary (except for my mom's battle with leukemia when I was younger) until a series of odd and somewhat unrelated events caused me to have PTSD. Since this is an anonymous forum if one chooses for it to be such, I can admit that I am growth delayed, which is better than being a "little person" because I always knew I would eventually reach small-normal adult size, which I have. (I'm now, at the age of 17 1/2, 5' 1" tall and about 87 pounds on a good day.  My lack of stoutness and physical maturation  are noticeably delayed for my age, though I am (finally!) at the very first stage of boob development. It's projected that menstruation won't plague me until after my eighteenth birthday, which is both good and bad, as any female would say. It's good because I don't have to deal with periods. It's bad because I look like I'm eleven or twelve, and I have only the earliest beginning of boob development, which is still better than the absolute zero I had in that regard this time last year.. My shrink used to recommend that I write about traumatic events that continue to cause me mental anguish, but I'm only seeing him on an occasional basis at this point. There aren't tons of events that caused me great anguish, as my parents didn't beat or starve me, but the traumatic events I did experience would be classified either as teen angst at its worst or as the stuff of which nighmares are made. I do have evil relatives on one side of my family who are partially responsible for some of my screwed-up-ness, but my life has generally been out of "Seventh Heaven" or "Growing Pains" (which I caught on reruns; my brother says I am the real-life Carol Seaver after the weight loss), compared to the early experiences of most of posters whose writings I've read thus far. I share more mundane aspects of my life at my regular blog site, but I will delve more deeply into a few of the darker aspects of my past here where I'm among individuals who have been where I've been, if in a slightly varied form.