To All Who Have Suffered
The entire experience has created a vulnerability and self consciousness in myself. In ways I’ve never felt before. I have lived the struggle, and I have worked very hard for years on that type of see-saw style way of living. I have experienced healing and self improvement in ways I never felt possible.
I want to bring attention and focus to the fact that I had to dig extremely deep from within, and from underneath. I would never had been able to find the courage if I hadn’t done that digging.
I describe it as my act of finally grasping God’s hand. He had been reaching for me for the entire time, however I needed an internal awakening before I could realize that Faith’s been there the entire time.
To follow through, I had to leave my vulnerability at the door. I finally chose to give back, and to share my reality, and to reach someone out there, as lost as I was. We pass by the faces everyday of those still suffering. But it’s a suffering in silence, that we don’t see.
Each day I learn a bit more on how to thoroughly present my guilts, shames and regrets of long ago, and show that it took years of work. Yet I’ve still been unable to totally let go.
It is not easy, and it’s quite difficult to know where to start when we’re talking about a full decade of opportunities, friendships, relationships, careers, trust, success and self respect all thrown away.
I swear to it for life, that the greatest feeling a man can feel and experience is legitimate, solid redemption. It’s a feeling that great, because it’s a feeling built on a total rebuilding of burned bridges, trust, and most difficulty, a rebuilding of not only self, but of an entire being.
The gift of being given a second chance to be a civilized human being is something not to be taken lightly. Because most never even get that second chance.
I’ve been given life twice by God. It’s his plan and mine, to use lessons learned in the first life, to build a second life so great, that it’s something I never ever imagined I would get a chance at.
