Book excerpt: This book chronicles my life, a life filled with many ups and downs. This book is actually a beautiful yet tragic love story. I plan to take you, my reader, on a remarkable journey. You will be able to create your own mental pictures while seeing life as it was through my eyes. I will share detailed accounts of a trying childhood, a rage-filled adolescence, and an equally self-destructive young adulthood. I will then share when the light came on and when I knew it was time for a change. That change proved to be the most difficult endeavor I had ever experienced.