Prologue
The day had started like most others in my life. I rose well before my wife, Cindy, and son, Christian, were awake. I slipped quietly down the stairs of our suburban Dallas home and stepped into what I consider in some ways to be my safe haven -- my workout and exercise area. I got down on the floor and began my usual routine -- 2,500 sit-ups and 1,500 push-ups. I'd been following that same pattern for more than twenty-eight years, 365 days a year come rain or shine, feast or famine, on the road or at home. Only today, in the process of writing this, did I calculate what that all meant: 17,500 situps a week; 910,000 per year; 25.480 million since it all began back in Wrightsville, Georgia, as a chunky sixth grader. By my calculations, it will take me a little more than twelve and a half more years to reach 37 million -- the number of miles the Earth is from Jupiter. My allusion to another planet is deliberate; for a lot of my life, I've felt like an alien, and tried to put a great distance between other people and me.
After I finished my workout, ... read full excerpt from: Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder ebook
