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.