Albedo, Purification of the Soul (part 1)

"The True Mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The True Heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning-less time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying Light."
-The Lion Turtle, Avatar the Last Airbender

I'm not sure when exactly I began to question everything that i thought was true.  I was once desperately blind, trying to walk by faith, trusting that something that I could neither see nor feel was guiding my path. The only thing I had to do was move my feet and meet all challenges.  Probably one of the advantages of growing up as a faithful athlete.

With that mindset I joined the military.  And really, that was the first leap of faith that I truly ever took.  I wasn't blinded by patriotism. I was befuddled by Love.  It consumed me.  The intensity of it made me believe that it was true. Up until then, I had never experienced anything "supernatural" and I had believed in the connection that was developing so much, I would have said it was Fate.

Both of us had been planning on joining together, her into medical, me into SERE.

The day I signed my contract I found out that she had walked out on a "bad feeling."  There I was, on my own, with my great-grandfather's advice echoing in my mind: "the only thing that a man has of any worth in this world is his word.  If you cannot fulfill your word then you have no worth."  A few days later I'm being put into the intelligence career field because I scored a 92 on the aptitude test. I didn't have a guaranteed job contract, and that is where "my country needed me." Blindly, I entered basic military training with a broken heart into an unknown world.

***

If it wasn't for that heart pain, I'm unsure if I would have made it through.  I wasn't a die-hard patriot and I was definitely not acclimated to the summer Texas heat.  I'm going to give all my success to my upbringing and the sport of wrestling.

Emotional pain was met with physical pain. My focus on finishing my goal and my faith drove me forward. I had earned the call-sign "Church" and was able to help others through their difficulties.  I never had the ability to command, but I had always had the ability to lead.  In basic military training I learned to follow.  More importantly I learned to persevere on my own.

In Technical School I learned the power of avoiding pain through video games, and my heartache lowered my threshold of social tolerance.  For a brief moment she came back into my life and everything resumed as "normal." But I knew it was different and grief of the distance took the place of love.

That's when I realized what I was really looking for: True Love.  That was when the purification process began and it would be a long and painful process.