Beautiful post, Laurie.
December, you said something on the forum here that you would have felt completely free to say to a girlfriend sitting at your kitchen table with a cup of coffee: "Why do those girls cling those abusive drug-addicted men? I just don't get it!"
That seems to me a reasonable befuddlement. And it is very similar to the feeling I have had when wives who have been beaten black and blue go back to their abusive husbands, terrified they might lose him.
I don't have anything to add to the conversation. Just want to thank Laurie and to acknowledge December's right to her confusion.