The SMELL Of DEATH...Surrounds You

I wrote a post yesterday titled: "When The Rain Comes". In that post I mention in passing that some of the adversity I faced was losing 6 close friends by the time I was 19 years old. This unfortunately was true and it had an incredibly negative affect on me as one might imagine. Like the Lynyrd Skynyrd song says: "The smell of death surrounds you"...it covered me like a blanket of DOOM. As a person who had lived through rape to suddenly see his closest friends drop like flies, had me convinced that the fault was my own. I felt like the Price Of Darkness long before they started calling Ozzy Osbourne that.

I can't describe how damaged my self-image became...And honestly it stayed that way until I not only found recovery but started to heal from all the psychological damage from rape. It is still a struggle. I also began to distance myself from people emotionally because I felt that if I got close to them then bad things would happen to them, to myself or both of us. It affected every relationship I have had after that time and as I commented on a friend's blog just the other day I am still holding back when it comes to relationships.

But it has begun to get better and I keep pushing forward and have started to trust people again....and trust myself to feel again. But there has been a fundamental change in heart that I attribute to an incredible desire to be whole again and therefore I have developed a bold FAITH that I will change.

But of course this is never easy and requires and incredible effort to stay the course and believe things will change. It is painful because trusting does not come easily and it dredges up awful memories of those close friends I've lost. And those were not the only friends I lost, just those that died before I was 20 years old.

It has now been a long time since I felt like the Prince Of Darkness but I still struggle with self-esteem and probably always will. But I can honestly say that I like who I am and have started to trust again. I now WANT to get better and see what life may have in store for me in the future. This is a complete reversal from my typical feeling of dread concerning the future. So Each day is a new adventure and now for the most part I'm excited to see what it is.