Prologue

"I sat there on the bench in the park. My head was down. I was drowned in my thoughts. My thoughts were swirling in the pool of guilt. The guilt overwhelmed my spirit. My spirit was overcast in the shadows of dark clouds of depression. How did I get to this point? What was I thinking? I thought I was in control. I thought fear would make her stay. I knew I was in love. No… wait. I ‘thought’ I was in love. Was I not in love? What about all the romance? I was so confused. Peering through this telescope of insight into the past, I see clearly that my mind was warped. My perception of the world was distorted by wayward, uneducated and foolish thinking.

Everything was broken. With a single act I had destroyed everything I had that was a potential for something good, despite it’s rocky foundation. I had allowed myself to tumble down the hole of infatuation, clouded in mind by discolored ideologies of love, or what I thought love was. Everything decision I made had its base on emotion. Every decision contributed to this moment, like an infected wound being fed upon by larvae and foul creatures. I had made efforts to communicate, to reach out, to plead and to beg. I had stripped myself willingly of all I was as a man right down to the bare veins of my heart. All proved to be futile. She was gone. That was it. As much as the remnants of any hope or optimism died off, I knew deep inside my broken heart that this was the end. All I was left with were my sins, guilt, regrets, shame and depression.

And as each second passed alone in my thoughts, somehow my eyes were opening slowly. I felt like a baby waking up into the world for the first time, as one who opens their eyes to a bright shining light in the morn; the cold, dark truth was blurry, but I was beginning to see it…and it hurt. I could not accept it at first. I did not want to. I was afraid to accept that was who I was, who I had become. But as each day came, and I awoke to my loneliness in the silence of my room, it started to become clear to me; I had lost this woman because of what I had done. That was the truth. If I could have ripped out my eyes with my bare hands so I did not have to see that truth again I would have. If I could have ended my life so I did not have to live that existence for another moment, I would have.

But I was not brave enough to end my own life, and as much as I was a fool, I still had the sense to acknowledge that the wiser decision would be to walk down that hard path to redemption. I was just afraid of making that first step as I did not see any light at the end of it. I was also conscious to constantly remind myself that if I am to do this, I had to do it for me, not for her. This was going to be the toughest turning point in my life…"