I’m starting to look at these last few years differently. Initially I thought they were just hell, almost like an ultimate test to see how badly I wanted to live (or not), and in some ways this era felt like God was testing me. In fact, It’s almost like He had to break me so that I’d now have a much greater understanding and empathy towards other people in horrific situations.

I really do have an unusual perspective on suffering these days, particularly other peoples.

Overcoming adversity, both in the practical and technical, with hand on heart I can now say this is my calling. And to go further, this is my service to the world – primarily through the stories I write and the perspectives that I offer through these.

Anyway, for years and years and years I tried to deny that this was my calling. I just wanted to live life as fun-loving and as freely as possibly, obviously within the realities of my disability. Never did I take the role model or inspiration stuff too seriously. It never interested me so much, if anything I was still trying to figure myself out, even my own pain. So, how could I be “chosen” while I was still so lost ad unhappy in my heart.

Well, as it turns out, in my beliefs, it’s far from ideal to be a teacher of sorts in a discipline that you don’t know or have experienced at depth – especially if you’re called to be service in such a delicate area as is overcoming adversity.

But what I’m trying to get at, like up until three years ago I’d been through some horrible situations and suffered some devastating losses, So, I did have some street cred. Only most of these scenarios had a fair amount of shock attached to them. I was never able to fully process my grief nor process much of all this at all I guess as it all kept coming so thick and fast.

But within these past three years, as the different sort of hellish that they’ve been More of a prolonged intense slog rather than a quick sharp brutal event, or even bulldozing my way through my pain), so now I’ve really had to sit in this grotesque disgust and feel it fully. Admittedly, I have tried to mask a lot of this pain with drugs, only at the end of the day there is no escaping from deep-seeded adversity. You just have to cop it sweet, to feel all the emotions fully, otherwise we just get stuck on the merry-go-round.

I can’t even begin to tell you how emotionally painful this is.

And for a present day update, this is right where I am again. I’ve been exactly here before and I’ve failed exactly here before many times.

You see, something finally feels different. The pain in me staying the same – my avoiding, numbing out, drug abuse – has become so great now that it’s easier to change. Plus, it’s a damn sight easier to live my “calling.”