HI Babaloo!

In reading your post, I can really feel the frustration and anger you feel and have felt in dealing with the betrayal of the past history with trolls. As I said to Cynthia, in my reponse to her today. I can imagine how hard it must be to trust new posters. I hope you trust me!! .

There's really nothing that us 'old-timers' can do to share the experience that we've had over the years, especially the Wild West years of the forums.  And you can't imagine the trauma that some people have endured.  And you can't imagine the betrayals either.

I empathize and also know there is nothing I can do about it now. It is a unique part of the cuture on this forum that I am just learning about. I think it has created a wound that it is hard to know how to heal as the possibility is always there that it can happen again.

  But, seriously I feel blamed for stating how I feel when I stated what my feelings were. 

It is different now that I know what backlog of emotions and experience were behind your words. If you put yourself in my place, me assuming the reaction was only to the current exchange and not knowing the history, you can see why I might interpret it as an overreaction...I learned something new.

 And part of abuse, IMO, is trying to invalidate what that person is feeling.  Ok, maybe that's being done to you here, I don't know.  You tell me.  But, what I'm getting here is that 'Oh, the ex-premies, the old-timers, are just mean and blah, blah, blah and they need to be more open and accepting of everybody and yada-yada-yada.' 

I am constantly working on better communication. And that obviously takes work on my part to understand another person's point of view. I hope it continues to work both ways here as I honor your feelings and apologize if I was judgemental. You know I like you...