I am a combat veteran and I was a molested child. What do these have in common and how does it relate to you? Simple bro scope me out here..... Both of these are facts about me and both of them are things that are either traumatic or are attached to traumatic events. Because of the things I have experienced I have felt hate and anger much of my life for one reason or the other. The thing I came to realize though was this; as long as I felt hate in my heart I was hurting myself not the ones who hurt me. By holding on to the hate and contempt I was allowing the man that molested me to molest me everyday of my life. The ripple effect from that was that everyone around me was having to suffer from it too. I was giving him power over me. By holding hatred and anger towards certain people and cultures I was making myself stay at war everyday of my life. I finally had to accept that the things that happened to me were not because something was wrong with me or I was just bad. All kinds of stuff will happen and does happen to us, we cannot control that entirely. All we can do is control how we handle it. You are measured by your actions not your circumstance. I had to quit feeling like anyone owed me something and that if I ever could get it I would be ok. The thing was I owed me something and I was the only one that could give it to me. I owed it to myself to learn to love myself, nobody else will ever love you if you dont love yourself it all starts there. You also will never be able to love anybody. It is easy when someone is bad to you like your mom or my greatgrandfather, to feel hate. It is very important that we feel loved and accepted by our families. Those relationships are the first ones we have and we learn how to treat others and how to be treated from those relationships. I suppose as others have said that you should get some counseling. I also know in my heart that one thing you can do is look back on how far you have come and think about those things that have happened, and know that you made it through it and because of it you are so much stronger. You are stronger and harder than most anybody else ever will be. You can take away from these experiences the knowledge of how important it is to make sure those around you feel loved and protected. You know first hand the importance of doing the right thing because you know what it is like when somebody does not. I wish you the best.