Chapter 21 2003

For the First Time in a Long Time…

How can I begin to explain how a touch of returned freedom, long absent from my life,

lifted me from dark to light. With just a few hours that the TDU gave me, I began to see

clearly there was absolute hope and solid proof I could escape the trauma of what had

happened to me.

For the first time in a long time I could make plans, form goals, and embrace everything

around me, embrace me. For the first time in a long time I could cry with joy and not in

fear.

For the first time in a long time I could look at myself in a mirror and smile. I could raise

my eyes to the sky to feel the touch of sun on my face and let it surround me with warmth.

I looked upon prairies and walked through woods smelling, hearing, and feeling the return

of comfort this created in me, if only for a few hours.

I felt my relationship changing with a world taken and hidden from me to a connection of

it being right there in front of me, brilliantly clear. All I hadn’t spent time with before was

emerging as an amazing part of everything around me, I felt it. Everything began to mean

more, it still does.

For the first time in a long time I could dance freely without falling down.

And dance I did.