I do believe that everything happens for a reason. Unfortunately you don't always know what that reason is.
Did I have to endure all the things that I did the last two years of my life to get to the point I'm at now? Probably not. Would I feel the same gratitude and appreciation toward life that I do now? Again, probably not. In my opinion, self-inflicted hardships are the worst to deal with. You have no one to blame but yourself. You were the one at the controls. You were making the decisions. For me, taking ownership of the chaos I created and the destruction left in my path, that was a tough thing to stomach.
Nothing good can come from shame. Night after night I spent counting the blinks of the light on the smoke detector in my room at Highland Ridge. Over and over I thought about what I had done and what I had become. It tore me up inside and I began to hate myself. Once I accepted the things I had done and realized that nothing in the world could change them, I forgave myself.
