Nicole,

My sympathy for a very rough passage, and skid marks or none, I think you earned plenty of karma by standing up and being counted -- it is not the thoughts, it's the acts that make the balance.

As to how someone could do such a thing in such a way, there's a point in the decline of human emotion where the compass needle simply swings south, and the whole calculation becomes inverted -- helping the future by destroying, as crazy as it sounds. In those straits the action that harms the most becomes th emost advisable, so inverted is the thinking. Yes, it is irrational. It is the core mechanism of irrationality, IMHO.

The reward for those who survive such an encounter is realizing how deep "down" can go and how much there is to celebrate in the ordinary accomplishments of living.

What a catastrophe. I only hope your neighbor finds her way out and gets a perspective on it free of shame and self-blame (which would be extremely misplaced), and finds a place from which to go on with her life with whatever lessons she can garner from it, but --eventually --without any scars.

Keep on keepin' on, dear gal!

A