I sit here in a
wheelchair, a
brain-damaged paraplegic but also a person who hasn’t changed at all beyond the superficial and an inability to stand up under my own strength. I am not looking for any pity from anybody else, I am too busy living and fighting, to deserve any of that at all. Needing help doesn’t make me helpless. If I am happy in being here and being me today then what is there to pity and for anybody who might do so, it probably reveals
more about them than it does me. I have no willingness to accept any notion that my current situation today, no matter how bad it may seem has to define my tomorrow, my next month or even my next year because quite simply I am not going allow it.

Until I actually feel that I can make no further progress, all I can do is to keep on moving forward. Selfish of me perhaps, I know, but as long as I am afforded the opportunity to get better then I don’t think anyone can really begrudge me if I grab it with both hands. I am grateful to anyone and everyone who allows me to keep battling through their assistance and support, a particular shout should go out to my wonderful wife for allowing me to keep fighting against my injuries whilst she goes out to do a tough job of work to keep me fed and clothed with a roof over my head before coming home tired in the evening and help with my rehabilitation at night.

Although I might not be able to walk today, one day soon I am absolutely sure that I will be able to at least hobble around inside this humble little apartment and as simple as that might seem, it will come as a huge boost in my quality of life and greatly reduce the stress and pressure that my wife totes around every day on her shoulders. Through hard work and determination I have already made more progress than had ever been anticipated. Until I actually feel it for myself, deep in my own bones that it is just all too much for me and I am left with no choice but to throw in the towel then I will continue in my single-minded pursuit of being able to walk once again and I haven’t yet come remotely close yet to reaching that unfortunate conclusion for myself. Until that dreaded day, I will
continue on undaunted with my pursuit of learning to walk once again and I haven’t yet come remotely close yet to reaching the painful decision that I am chasing the impossible.

There is no doubt in
my mind that hard work is a benefit as of itself, of course doing your utmost
allows you to create tangible benefits for yourself through the creation of
improvements in personal performance and excellence in the field you’re
endeavouring to master. Hard work and effort are virtues worth instilling, and
worth having too. The benefits of self-control seem readily apparent. Ignoring
distractions, perseverance in the face of difficulty, conscientiousness in
general; these traits all allow us to grow as people. Studies in the UK have
perhaps not unsurprisingly shown that individuals with better work habits go on
to be more successful than their less motivated peers.

As with anything
else, there is always a price to be paid and after all, if success was freely
available to anyone who wanted it then everybody would have it. Most success
comes from doing enough productive work. Just by working hard on what you believe
will give a better perspective and then you can better understand its true value?
That’s when you start to respect the work itself and when you start to learn
the important life lessons of patience and responsibility. It’s only when
avoiding the bad habits of procrastination,
insecurity
and the fear
of failure that success becomes more attainable. When it comes down
to it, nothing else delivers results and progress better than good,
old-fashioned hard work, action is habit forming and leads to more action. So
build a plan, roll up your sleeves and work as hard as you can on your journey
to where you are planning to be.

Unfortunately, for
those averse to hard work the prospects are not as rosy and can see people with
poor work habits having issues with inadequate sleep,
insufficient nutrition
and poor hygiene.
For me, getting worse is the greatest fear, if there is a risk of getting worse
that comes from inaction I will always seek to counter that by pushing ahead
with the task at hand. Getting better and bringing my body as far as it has
come has taken a tremendous amount of hard work, and sometimes I have hurt
myself by pushing too hard and seeing my urine turn cola-coloured from a bout
of rhabdomyolysis. Rhabdomyolysis is a serious
syndrome due to a direct or indirect muscle injury, resulting from the death of
muscle fibers and release of their contents into the bloodstream. This
can lead to serious complications such as renal failure, meaning that the
kidneys cannot properly remove waste and concentrated urine. Apart from
going too far and hurting myself, I have only got as far as I have through a
lot of hard work each and every day since I first got injured.

The idea for this
website, if that is indeed what it’s destined to grow into has been brewing
slowly in the far corners of my mind since I got sick all those many years ago.
Slowly coming back into consciousness tethered to the bed in ICU because my
uncomprehending mind kept trying to rip out all the tubes I was connected to.
Tubes that now, of course, I understand were only there to keep me alive. In
between the crazed morphine
dreams that were running through my mind and the occasional moments of clarity
when I would imagine writing my experiences down in a letter. A letter that now
has grown and grown through the days, months and years that it has taken me to
even get so far as to actually be able to write this all down.

Unfortunately, I had
grossly underestimated the time frame involved in getting a 6′ tall adult male
back on his feet and had thought it would be much easier than it has actually
turned out to be. With my muscles
wasting away far much faster than they can be built up again and the
hidden enemy of spinal cord damage a truly unforgiving opponent, this story has
grown from no longer than a letter to magazine article size and still insists
on running and running. There have been times on this journey when it would
have been much easier to give in to frustration and call time on the whole
thing. Though, I have always been mindful of what giving up would actually
mean, turning back on all the hard work and allowing my condition to get worse
and worse. To resign myself to a life in this wheelchair and the inability to
get myself to the bathroom and the consequent lifelong need for these
increasingly irksome nappies is just something I cannot allow myself to do. As
long as I keep making progress and am able to continue fighting against my
injuries because of the care and attention afforded to me by my wonderful wife,
I see no reason at all to give up.

Those were dark days
and I don’t think I have ever been as weak at any point in my life as I was
then. There were desperate times, lying awake unable to sleep and feeling so
utterly alone with despair getting the better of me, I prayed for all the pain
and uncertainty that crushed my spirit to be taken away from me. I had dropped
so far down into a hole of physical weakness, muscle loss and nerve damage
that it has taken me almost five years and all my effort and hard work to drag
myself to a point where today I feel that I might be able one day soon to take
my first steps into a brave, new world. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not
looking to talk myself up into being something or someone that I am patently
not. When I do at last actually beat this horrible affliction the credit will
not belong to me but all the remarkable people who have fought alongside me, to
get me back on my feet.

But my dark,
despairing mood was only a matter of interpretation because even the tiniest
amount of light will always outshine the darkness of the
blackest night. Darkness is the absence of light, which in
scientific terms is simply electromagnetic
radiation, produced by photons of energy
and visible to the naked
eye. Darkness, the truest and darkest of all is not the simply the
absence of light, it is the belief that the light will never return. The light
will always return, to illuminate our lives and show us our in our loved ones,
family and things entirely new and long overlooked, new possibilities and the
challenge to pursue them. From those darkest of days, the light has always
shone forward and chased away the pitch darkness that had once come so close to
swallowing all hope.

Assuming that we all
have sufficient scientific knowledge to blunder through all this let’s talk
about light for a second, without light we wouldn’t be able to see and we
wouldn’t have anything to eat without photosynthesis
kick-starting the food chain and without light for about 6 months we’d all
become completely and hopelessly disoriented.

Light is fundamental
to our lives and we are utterly dependant on it, it serves to nurture our spirituality and
across a number of religions,
light is seen as the source of goodness and the
ultimate
reality. Nothing can ever outrun the light, it is all powerful and
unvanquishable. No matter how desperate your situation might seem, no matter
how hopeless and futile there is always light to be found and the hope that
comes with it. Darkness only provides the opportunity to hide away from our reality,
to avoid facing up to the challenge and the opportunity to make the change.

Unfortunately upon
leaving hospital I wasn’t strong enough to even grip a pen or even attempt to
type this all down and so I opened a file on my mobile phone to jot things down,
using the index finger on my working left hand to note down anything and
everything that seemed as though it might potentially be worth writing about
once I eventually sat down to write everything down, because brain damage made
it difficult for me to use my right hand without experiencing an awful lot of
pain, with my muscles and tendons contracted so much that my hand resembled a
gruesome claw.

What you are reading
now on these pages before you is the product of those notes, in all their
garbled, shorthand glory. I sit here tapping away at the keyboard with that
same phone sat on the table next to me and refer to it constantly for
inspiration and reminders of just everything that has gone before. I am not
really sure why I insist on checking those notes quite as often as I seem to
do. Perhaps it’s just in the hope that on just one more glance there might have
been a wondrous plot twist that sees me make a huge spontaneous leap forward
with my training and fly forward in time to a point where I no longer have any
need for a wheelchair to sit in and type but unfortunately my progress has
never been that miraculous and for now this story isn’t quite finished just
yet.

Don’t get me wrong I
haven’t been childishly putting off writing all this down, treating it like
some needless chore with little tangible benefit. If anything it’s quite the
opposite and for a long, long time I had been throwing myself wholeheartedly
into getting stronger, training my muscles and building towards getting back on
my own 2 feet. Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that this story
happened in the blink of an eye, it has taken five long years of blood, sweat
and tears to fight my way this far along this tough, unforgiving road of
rehabilitation and training.

Telling this story
might have just been down prioritized, it has taken a while to drag myself
forward to a point where at long last I am strong enough to sit here at my desk
overlooking the river. Here I sit, listening to a cacophony of dissonant music
coming through the stereo and try to commit everything onto my laptop, having
built up sufficient strength in my back muscles to stop me falling forward
whenever I might lean over the PC looking for another rarely used letter on the
keyboard. Damn you letter ‘J’!

More than anything
it’s just a matter of timing, as I sit here with a broken ankle curtailing any
further training for the time being. It’s about time to get everything down for
posterity and it feels good to be in something approaching a kind of work
routine, to be using my brain. Not just stagnating in front of daytime TV and
the constant re-runs on Cable Television that reward fleeting stardom in the
1980s with televisual immortality into perpetuity.

I appreciate it when
well-meaning people lean in to tell me in conspiratorial tones that I shouldn’t
give up because nothing is impossible. Unfortunately, it’s also sadly true that
all I do is nothing, each and every day. Hardly ever leaving the same four
walls, my life for most of the last five years has for been spent during the
waking hours in this one room. Sat here, I have learned to cope with life as
someone with life-changing injuries and the newfound perspective that affords.
For want of an alternative expression, growing as a person and adapting the
ways I go about living my life. Life from a wheelchair is an entirely different
experience to any adventure I had ever been on before and I have learned to
approach life from an entirely new perspective based on my new fundamentals of
humility, gratitude and positive thinking.

In our modern
society full of corporate power and the cult of stardom, being humble might
seem like a weakness to be exploited. If anything, it is actually a trait to be
praised and cultivated and once balance had been achieved between self-confidence
and humility, I had crossed a significant barrier in our own personal
development. Hubris
isn’t conducive to a healthy lifestyle as evidenced by the dramatic falls of
such diverse personalities as President Nixon,
Lance Armstrong,
Martin Shkreli
and Harvey
Weinstein. All of whom didn’t realise the world was watching them
quite so closely and lost their place on the pedestal of fame and power. Power
and influence don’t provide carte blanche to
do absolutely anything and shouldn’t apply to everyone trying to drag
themselves up the tree towards the higher branches or even for me, desperately
straining to reach the bottom-most branch.

How can it be
possible for the human ego to resolve itself to being both omnipotent and also
willing to take a back-seat? For me, I have always known that I possess no
god-like powers and am not and never will be a deity.
As a mere man, I am frail and weak as the recent past has more than adequately
proven and all I can do is endeavour to be the best me that I can be, to do my
utmost in every situation I encounter and bear responsibility for taking the
course of action that I felt compelled to take.

When I think back to
my school days and the two schools I went to when I was a child. Which like
most Public Schools in England had ominous sounding Latin mottos;
“Prodesse Quam Conspici” and “Ut Severis Seges” and I think both of them have
helped shape me as the person I am today by being the tenets that my education
was based upon. “Prodesse Quam Conspici” or to accomplish without being conspicuous,
to generate results without the need to show off just for having done what
needed doing. Whereas “Ut Severis Seges” meaning as you sow, so shall you reap
or basically every choice and action you make has a result and a direct consequence.
In the internet era with self-worth and accomplishment measured in followers
and likes it is difficult to forget about a constantly watching world and try to
work anonymously just for the sake of working and not have that effort
recognised, taking responsibility for everything you do, labouring in an
assumed vacuum. I think an important lesson can be learned by taking time to
think on these two simple principles, take them to heart and change our behaviour
so we’re able to reach that point in our lives when we did things for nothing
more than the enjoyment and challenge that it brought with no thought at all
about reward, to also take responsibility for what had been done. I am
convinced that we can all manage to make progress towards our preferred
destinations of choice in life and take responsibility for our actions along
the way.

Plaudits are a
consequence of life and not a reason for living, a by-product and not the goal.
They will come along naturally once you concentrate your efforts on more
important things. Climb a mountain not to plant a flag and conquer it but for
the challenge and to take in the view, ascend it so you can see the world and
not so the world can see you. Travel the world not to cross places off a list
and pat yourself on the back for being worldlier than the next man but to grow
and develop as a person from the experience. Challenge yourself to do new,
untried things and create what previously hadn’t existed, not for
self-satisfaction but for the good it will bring to you and others, the
benefits you will be able to deliver to the world that surrounds you. The
sweetest joy in life comes from the recognition that you aren’t alone in being
special because everyone is.

Ego
is the enemy and never a friend. Becoming a slave to personal ego is the
ultimate exercise in futility, surrounding yourself with yes-men who always
agree whatever you might say and massage the ego is entirely self-defeating. At
its negative worst ego is a sense of superiority and certainty that exceeds the
bounds of confidence and talent. Although, it is also true that ego is a
motivating force that drives people towards excellence it can also be the inner
enemy, chipping away at you from the inside and driving you towards
questionable decisions that benefit nothing but your own ego and tenuous sense
of self-worth. Having a few people who can say it like it really is and help
bring you back to reality are essential to personal growth, staying humble and
keeping your feet grounded firmly on the earth.

Regardless of
whoever you might be it is essential to treat everyone around you with respect
and courtesy. We are all in it together and can only make progress because
others chose not to stand against you and block your efforts. When we listen,
we discover a world of alternative insight and simply ignoring them and forcing
our opinions on them relegates you to the assumption that you are omnipotent
and can solve any problem on your own. Which is nothing more than a rear-view
mirror perspective that forces us to rely on past experiences and leaves us
completely unprepared to face the googly
that we all might have to face one unexpected day?

Nothing is ever
going to be learned and nobody impressed by anybody who consistently insists on
shifting blame and making excuses for their actions. Forward movement can only
be achieved by taking responsibility, owning your mistakes and apologising for
them. Saying that you’re sorry isn’t an admission of inferiority, unworthiness
or weakness. Rather it serves a useful and objectively measurable purpose by
converting a desire for revenge into a willingness to forgive and forget but
only if you take ownership of the apology by accepting blame and not fanning
the flames with mere sympathy.

No matter what you
are able to achieve it is vital that you treat it as an ongoing process, a
life-work in progress. Never allow complacency to enter your thinking,
complacency is the fruit of ego and not humility. The pursuit of excellence is
a journey, not a destination and only achieved by pushing yourself to keep
progressing forward. Continuing with the process of growing, through to higher
levels of excellence that enable you to keep working on your limitations and to
remain grounded.

We lose a lot of
energy and end up hurting ourselves by brooding with negative emotions. There
have been innumerable studies that scientifically demonstrate that happy people
live healthier lives by living them positively. It is my firm belief that
adequately expressing and feeling gratitude leads to happiness, by focusing on
the positive we can compensate for our brains’ natural tendency to focus on
negative, threats and worries. By broadening our thinking to include positive
emotions such as joy, love and happiness we can effectively relegate negative
anxieties to the back of our minds.

Recently released
research testing emotional responses in an MRI environment has shown when
presented with uncertain or questionable situations, negative responses are
achieved faster and more smoothly than positive. Test subjects were asked to
look at photographs of other people’s faces and rate their likeability. The
same test subjects were then called back later for a follow-up session inside
an MRI
scanner the following week and were shown fearful, surprised and
neutral faces. Now they were asked to change their opinion of some of the
images to gain insight into how they went about reframing their opinions and
which part of the brain actively responded to facilitate this change.

The analysis
revealed that the brain reaches for negative responses faster and more easily
than when developing positive opinions. Indeed, the human brain finds it easier
to think negatively especially in younger people. As we get older and develop
more experience, we are better able to appraise without simple knee-jerk
negativity. In much the same way as we learn to stay in better emotional
control as we advance in years we are able to learn to override initial
negative responses by ignoring the negative that surrounds them and focus on
the positive instead.

So it is possible
over time to learn to see things from a different perspective, we can unlearn
the knee-jerk negativity our brains initially jump to and see things in a more
positive light. By learning to take our time and not going with the immediate
response and allowing ourselves to see the other side of the coin. It is both
possible and part of the human experience to change our emotional responses and
experiences, with a bit of time we can learn to change those parts of ourselves
we are not happy with.

It’s easier than you
might think too and you can start by eliminating outward anxieties by removing
doubt and nagging, complaining about things we deep down know aren’t really all
that important. That alone should provide us with more than enough time to focus
on positive inner emotions of love, contentment and friendship. Life is
precious and who really knows when that bolt from the blue is going to strike,
relish the moments of joy and be thankful for living your life with purpose and
the opportunity to create your own destiny.

Be grateful for the
little things like the roof over your head because there are a lot of people
who aren’t so fortunate. Break your life down into what is needed for you to
grow as a person, to achieve and function. Think in terms of the model laid out
by Maslow,
a bottom-to-top pyramid
of hierarchical needs ascending from the basic to the psychological
and then on to self-fulfilment. Starting at the bottom with food, water,
warmth, shelter, safety and security. Then on to the psychological needs of
love, friendship and accomplishment before topping out with self-actualisation
and achieving the place in society that each individual longs for the most.

I am sure that for
many of us are fortunate enough to have already met a lot of those needs and
are just struggling to top it all off satisfactorily by filling our lives with
luxuries and those nice-to-have items that feel important before you acquire
them but aren’t actually life-essential in the long run. In simple terms,
anybody fortunate enough, in this modern world, to have a roof over their head,
food in their belly, a PC, a mobile phone, loving family, supportive friends
and a special someone in their lives has already ticked most everything off
their list of needs and that’s a tremendous amount to be grateful for. The
reward that comes from this sense of happiness and self-satisfaction is achieved
through giving thanks to all the other people we meet as we go about our daily
lives, to acknowledge the good in people and giving a nod to someone else’s
attitude and effort.

I love where I live,
it isn’t palatial but is more than I had ever hoped for in a place that I am
absolutely delighted to be able to call home. We had bought it less than a year
before I had got sick and now the tyre track scars on what had once been a
newly purchased apartment floor are constant reminders of my change in
circumstances. The damage on the walls and doors play ample testament to the
significant changes my present lifestyle has been forced to undergo and my
reliance on this wheelchair in every aspect of my current life. I am grateful
that it has been here to help me, though I do regret the damage caused to a
perfectly good apartment and hate catching even a glimpse of my own reflection
sitting here chair bound in the windows on the dark winter evenings. Though
that is just the vanity of ego and self-image and who knows, maybe one day this
same wheelchair might sell to wealthy collectors for the large amount of money
that Dr Stephen Hawking’s has recently gone for. Though, for that to happen I
will need to do something more significant to contribute to the Human experience
and would need a little bit more time, say a couple of hundred years by which
time I’d only have come to be known as the man who lived almost as long as Clive of India’s
tortoise, Adwaita.

In fighting back
from life-changing injuries or just going about your daily life, just remember
there is no such thing as false hope, it’s all just hope and that can never be
a bad thing at all. Thinking positive can only ever make you feel better,
significantly reduce stress and lift your spirits especially if you ever take
time to consider what might happen if thoughts ever might ever turn dark and
negative. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s bad to have negative thoughts, it is
all just part of the natural grieving process and it took me a long time to
come out into the light and put that dark tunnel behind me. For now, I’d prefer
not to go too deeply into them and allow even a slight hint of that
soul-crushing negativity back into my mind, now I’ve gotten through that
painful and uncertain stage in the grieving process.

It wasn’t easy and
took an awful lot of emotional energy and self-control to be able to smile
again. It’s embarrassing just to think that I’d almost forgotten how to do
something so utterly fundamental. I would wheel myself to the big picture
window at the end of the hall in the Rehabilitation
Hospital and consumed with negative thoughts would try and allow my
mind to escape into the unknown to watch random people walking into the
shopping centre that stood opposite, to dream of abandonment and the welcoming
abyss of nothingness. It was a blessed relief to allow my thoughts to wander
vicariously but I learned more when I switched my focus onto my own face
reflected in the window and set about teaching myself how to smile again, my
mood lightened and felt a lot less dark and foreboding, far less consumed by
stress and uncertainty.

I have been
fortunate throughout this time because I have always had Miko with me, we
married less than a year before I was struck down with my injury and were very
much newlyweds. She has always been with me, every step of the way, visiting
the hospital twice a day when I couldn’t even feed myself and giving
constructive, loving feedback. She has never once doubted that I would be able
to walk again and her upbeat perspective has kept at bay the latent negativity
I might have been harbouring inside. More than anything her love and support
has enabled me to avoid the slippery slope where thoughts are given a voice,
then become actions and habits. Which ultimately take over my personality before
eventually subverting my fate completely.

After all, it’s OK
to have negative thoughts, humans are a paranoid species which years of
evolution have hard-wired it into our programming. Running away from the
suspicious shadow you thought might be a Sabre-toothed Tiger
imparts an evolutionary advantage because those who didn’t run and got it wrong
were no longer to contribute to the gene pool.
Keeping an eye out for threats because of the fear of being stalked or
threatened enables people to be prepared for potential threats in the future
and plan around them. Which makes far more sense than removing yourself from
the gene pool like a needlessly brave idiot or a contender for the Darwin Awards.

Positivity alone
might not always be enough, someone so imbued with positive thoughts may well
be unable to ascertain true motives in all their colleagues. To be completely
unable to consider the possibility that others in their group might be working
against them, such naivety is dangerous and opens people to being taken
advantage of. Positivity should always be employed with internal boundaries and
balance is key, because everyone being out to get you is ridiculous paranoia so is
the notion that everyone is on your side.

Positive thought is
important but it is only through feelings of anxiety that we are able to
realise when change is vital. I am incredibly fortunate to be in such a good
situation at the moment. Where I’m focused completely on rehabilitation and
getting back on my feet because my wonderful wife has taken the anxiety out of
my life and I must shower her with thanks for assuming that burden and allowing
me the freedom of mind to revel in its own positivity.

But I must be ready
to step out of my comfortable cocoon once I do manage to start walking around
in the house and it’s important to stay grounded and aware of the world that
has continued on apace in my absence. Life can be a cruel teacher, if I don’t
learn from my past I am destined to repeat previous mistakes. When trauma
strikes, it is logical to positively think our way through it, but fear,
sadness and worry are equally important emotions too. Just as you can over-eat
at the table of positivity, so can you over-indulge in negative thought? Too
much positive thinking hampers the ability to respond to the unforeseen and
work our way out of difficulties without repeating the same situation again and
again. At the same time, negativity leaves people powerless, victims of
circumstance unable to make the changes needed.

With a mind already
hard-wired towards anxiety and negative thoughts, balance can only be achieved
by introducing controlled positivity to enable the creation of the appropriate mind-set
needed to respond adequately to unforeseen situations and create your own
desired outcomes into the future. Self-perception
is our own internal guidance system that helps us keep tabs on our own personal
balance; through awareness from things we’ve been exposed to, deletion to
filter out whatever is determined to be worth ignoring and distortion which is the
filter you use when looking at reality. With decisions and deletions made
always influencing your awareness of reality. To change your circumstances or
make changes in your life, you must modify your awareness through conscious
choice. The internal resolution that is ongoing inside all of us, to allow
ourselves to move forward according to our hard-wiring or to debunk it is more
than anything else an opportunity for Personal Growth. My injuries were a wake-up
call, a seemingly impossible situation that challenged me to do something and
in doing so alter my sense of perception.

For me change required positive thinking and a hefty dose of reality, change is
inevitable just as doing produces an action and a reaction and inaction results
in atrophy and decay. There is always balance, you can’t have black without
white and without darkness, and there is no light. Positive and negative are
connected, it is only the way that we perceive them that is disjointed. Positive
thought is important but without anxiety and discomfort, we can never realize
what needs to be changed. Only when it becomes more difficult to suffer than to
change, most of us will choose to think logically and pursue change but we must
allow ourselves to feel fear, anger, sadness, worry, they are important
emotions. Understanding all this drove my decision making and enabled me to
create balance so I could respond to the situation I had found myself in, to
move forward towards creating the desired outcome in the future. Maybe, I’m
half shark and would die if I ever stopped moving because instinctively I felt
deep inside that doing nothing at all was never an option.

Having left
Rehabilitation Hospital and all the good that had been achieved there I made
the conscious decision to draw a line under that phase of my journey to allow
for a natural reset and begin anew with the immense challenge of learning to
walk with renewed vigour and I haven’t looked back since. Now my positive mind
is driving me forward towards happiness, health and a satisfying end to what
might have easily turned into a sad story if I had ever allowed it to take a
turn away back into the darkness.

I’ve been there
before in the past and never want to return that deep, dark pit of loneliness
and despair, nothing good can ever come from that kind of thinking and nothing
ever absolutely and definitively has to be impossible. With my sense of humour
intact, self-assuredness and consummate faith in myself and everyone around me
I am going to get over this unfortunate situation and above all else, that will
get me through to the very end of this monumental journey.