We stood at the turning point...

...as so many before us had. I can honestly say it's nothing I ever expected, or could have dreamed of really. I think there comes a certain age when you stop and finally think, "Hmm...maybe they were right?"

I've thought a lot of times in the past that things were settling down, getting better, easing up, only to come back to a head and try to keep me down. Many, if not most of these times, it was my own doing. I've learned the hard way after so many years that most of your life is your own making, and frankly I'm tired of how things have been a misleading representation of amazingness, only to let myself screw it all up.

It's interesting when you finally wake up and look in the mirror and have somehow shed all ego and restrictions to you making the statement, "I'm going to trust in something higher than myself." I'm not a religious person, I don't believe in God or the angel I'm named after. But I do believe that there are things in this life you can't understand fully without some sort of belief in....something.

What does all of this mean? It means that there are still 11 steps to go. It means that mornings lately present me another opportunity to show just how strong I can be in controlling my desires and vices. It means that someday, maybe tomorrow or maybe 10 years from now, I'll have achieved most if not all of my goals in life. And it means that finally, even though it's too late, I can change my way of thinking and be who I always needed to be.

I'll finish school. I'll be the son my parents always wanted. And for now, that will be enough, because in a world of a thousand possibilities, I still just want one thing. For what it's worth, I wish I'd seen these answers so many months ago. You deserved better that I gave you.