Normally, my soul feels shattered, my heart is on fire, and my life is a frozen wasteland, but lately, I’ve become someone else, my soul feels whole, my heart is tender, and my life is something exciting and worthy. I used to hate myself, because all I used to know was an unbearable pain felt in the heart and soul, where something was constantly ripping and tearing at me, throwing salt on my bleeding and shredded heart, and this was all I knew. You might think that after awhile it would just stop hurting, but it never did, it only got to the point where I became numb from all other aspects of life, and began to lose sight of everything I cared about. I was truly, and latterly drowning in my own sorrow, I could see and feel and remember only the pain I felt, I lost sight of joy and love, and could no longer distinguish between life and death. Death was often desired over life, because life had become a living hell, and would be a mercy so pure that nothing seemed to look so dam good.

I had already pushed myself so far down the road that I passed those who know only hell, and entered a land of ice, of coldness that can come only to those who wake up, to now they will feel hells deepest wrath. I would wake up into a life I didn’t want to live, because the only certain thing in my life was that my heart was dying, every second of the day, and that my soul was fading into oblivion, causing me to hate. I truly hated this pain, because it was all I had left, and all I didn’t want, and all I was. I was truly lost, seeking out death every moment of the day, but it was the one desire I was not granted, and the one desire I had left. It is the cruelest punishment in the world, there is nothing worse, nothing that can come even close, and it was forced upon me, why I know not.

What I do know, however, is that I have survived that time, survived a time that is impossible to survive in, survived the worst of what hell has to inflict, and emerged out of it as an entirely unique and, something person. It’s the word that I fail to find which I feel now defines me, and it’s along the lines of tempered and deep understanding, some word that combines that, and o few others like it. I am healing the wounds wrought from my time in total chaos, learning to love again, to appreciate the life I have and choose to live, and to face my past with acceptance, because I cannot change what has come to pass. You may be curious as to what prompted my change, but it’s not really something special, just a few friends who helped me to recognize who I had become, and guided me back to a point where I could help myself.

To be more specific, I was asked one question, “what are three things you like about yourself, that doesn’t involve others”, I couldn’t answer the question, and it helped me realize just how lost I was. so, with that question at hand, in mind, I began a journey of sorts, a quest to identify who I am, and to surround myself with those who will support me on my quest. I have come to understand many things about who I am, that I am a writer, a scholar, a reader, an intellect, a runner, I am loyal, passionate, I preservers, I care I accept, I persist, and, as a man, I love. I have come through the greatest trials that hell possesses, and through the fire and ice of it all, the bitterness and sorrow, the loss and the destruction, the pure pain and the endless agony, a legend has been forged.

I know that there was something seeing me through these times, protecting me when I gave up on life; it was the smith forging in the flames, creating something that can only be forged with the hottest fires and the coldest ices of hell. It was this guiding hand that created me, that tempered my soul and my heart into what it is now, it was my friends that helped pull me out of hell and set me on my path, it was me who chose to continue with out path, to learn about myself, and to love again. I know hell, I know how it feels, how much it hurts, how much you lose and don’t have, I know the pain; I want you to trust me, I want you to know that it will be alright, I want you to just keep going, no matter what, because there is a bright side.