In this what is called life, there will be good and bad. For some, life's lows seem to outnumber the highs.

My story is a great example of that premise. Physical and sexual, as well as rejection, in my childhood left me with the perspective that life's lows were what life was. With very little instruction on life and what to do with it, I lived for the day, not really caring to see the next, not caring for my own life. I felt nothing for the lives of others, that carelessness put me in a place where I realized. Not only my physical person was imprisoned but the spiritual also. I knew that I couldn't escape this prison on my own. I needed something greater than myself. I sought to teach myself self-discipline and tried to enlighten myself studying religious text. But there was still a hole where I knew something should be. In my search, my eyes were really opened to evils of man, which enlarged the whole that I was trying to fill. As I was reading in my cell, one night, a wave of understanding washed over me. And I knew what I was missing: love. Here I was reading the story of a man who I didn't believe in demonstrate something that I've been missing and looking for without really knowing was missing in my life for so long. So I decided to obtain it by imitating who literally is it. And as I attempt this imitation, I see the highs and lows of life in a different light. I lived a life without hope. But there is always hope. Sometimes we just have to look for it, and sometimes we have to let it find us. And as for the highs and lows of life, I've learned to separate the pearls from the swine.