The Hollow Mask

WHO AM I...? For the best part of my life, I have asked the question. I know I believe that only a very troubled person could ask it. If you grew up in a normal family, your path in life is pretty much straightforward, barring a few exceptions here and there. But my life is hardly normal-far from it. For one thing, I started life with an outcast family. It's a large family headed by a drunk and a woman who hardly showed us love. We made for a ghastly sight in the small community, one that people avoided dealing with. Growing up poor with uncaring parents is difficult enough. How much more difficult could it be when you're questioning your sexuality at such a young age at a time when the church and society looked down at these taboo and "abominable" qualities? So it was my early calling to endure, my cross to bear. Used, confused, and abused, I survived somehow to transition to military life. As with many young people, it offered a clean slate to start over and forge a life ahead. I wished that it was that easy. I had the fortune to exhibit talents that led me to great success, but it was also accompanied by enormous failures and unbearable tragedy within the military establishment. But decades of unaddressed, deep psychological wounds finally caught up with me. I was inexorably forced to reckon with all my past sins. I could lose it all-my beloved girlfriend, my career, and everything I've accumulated-and from a Christian standpoint-not to mention the very possibility of losing my soul.... Would I ever get past all of it?