reflecting on my life, it is always amazing to me to realize how much things can change in a short amount of time.  i sit here today writing my thoughts and feelings in a public forum without hesitation;  this would not have taken place a year ago today.  a year ago i was drunk, bitter, angry, and self-destructive, there was not a moment when i was not actively seeking my own demise, lost in a whirlwind of despondency and depression.  i don’t really know how it all started, it just seems to have been building since childhood and continued into my adult life.  not that there weren’t beautiful moments during this time, there was just a darkness always hanging over it all, separating me from the joy that could have been.  in the middle of july last year it all came to a head, and i was forced to make a choice of life or death.  i packed all my belongings into my car with less than $100 to my name and drove to the mountains of north carolina.  i had never been to the town i was going to stay in, and i had a key to an apartment of a friends, where he was not then living.  after a few grueling months of desperation and soul searching, i emerged a different form of the man i had been.  i know people who speak of moments similar and say at those moments they had found god or some spiritual insight that relieved them of their burdens.  for me this did not occur.  i simply found me, the thing that had been missing for too long.  when left with nothing and no one to turn to, i found the strength within me to finally let go of the ideas and thoughts that had been killing me for more than thirty yrs.  

this is not a story of drug addiction or alcoholism and the dangers to be faced, or a story of miraculous salvation from some outside force.  it is simply a story of the power of changing the point of view of ones life.  if you don’t like the way life looks, look at it differently.  i have always been a person who pushed everything to the limits, and that has not changed, nor do i want it to.