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Life Changing/Shattering Experiences.
PerfectStranger
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I've been thinking a lot lately about how specific, random events can completely alter the landscape of your life. I don't really mean the birth of a child or something fairly predictable along those lines. I'm talking about the mack truck that comes out of nowhere and leaves you completely different than you were.
To get things started, I'll relate the event that set me to thinking about this.
Recently, a friend of mine was murdered during a botched robbery. The circumstances are, frankly, idiotic. The culprits should at no point have expected to get away with anything they did. People knew they were together, and they had shared acquaintances . Unfortunately, instead of just being a dumb criminal story to lighten up the newspaper, they were also stupid enough to add a murder charge to the ticket.
My friend was only in her mid-twenties, and she was snuffed completely out of existence over a ludicrously small amount of money. I suppose the twist is that I had only known her for a month. I'm really not sure whether that's good or bad at this point. On the one hand, I might have been even more attached after a longer period of time. On the other, I never really got to know her well enough to take any of the shine off. She died as an ideal.
I can't really even just let myself be ripped up over it. I'm married, and this girl was on track to being more than a friend. She already was, really. I know, I'm a dick.
I used to only drink on occasion and always socially. Now, I'm pretty well on my way to manifesting the alcoholism so ubiquitous in my family. My primary form of entertainment for years has been video games, but they've lost their appeal. I'm becoming significantly more extroverted and possibly a little reckless. I never used to go out very much, but that's changed as well. I'm basically incapable of holding a proper conversation at home, I mostly just brood.
I've had my share of experience with depression in the past, but it's safe to say that this is completely different. I'm trying to get past this girl that I really barely knew, but my brain is still stuck in that first, chemical stage of "love", and now I hardly recognize myself. I'd be lying if I said I really understood the depth of my reaction.
I've been deliberately vague on some details to confound google fu for reasons that aren't even really clear to me.
So, what kind of random bullshit has transformed you? Exactly how differently did you wake up, and did you ever feel yourself going back to "normal'? It doesn't necessarily have to be something negative.
To get things started, I'll relate the event that set me to thinking about this.
Recently, a friend of mine was murdered during a botched robbery. The circumstances are, frankly, idiotic. The culprits should at no point have expected to get away with anything they did. People knew they were together, and they had shared acquaintances . Unfortunately, instead of just being a dumb criminal story to lighten up the newspaper, they were also stupid enough to add a murder charge to the ticket.
My friend was only in her mid-twenties, and she was snuffed completely out of existence over a ludicrously small amount of money. I suppose the twist is that I had only known her for a month. I'm really not sure whether that's good or bad at this point. On the one hand, I might have been even more attached after a longer period of time. On the other, I never really got to know her well enough to take any of the shine off. She died as an ideal.
I can't really even just let myself be ripped up over it. I'm married, and this girl was on track to being more than a friend. She already was, really. I know, I'm a dick.
I used to only drink on occasion and always socially. Now, I'm pretty well on my way to manifesting the alcoholism so ubiquitous in my family. My primary form of entertainment for years has been video games, but they've lost their appeal. I'm becoming significantly more extroverted and possibly a little reckless. I never used to go out very much, but that's changed as well. I'm basically incapable of holding a proper conversation at home, I mostly just brood.
I've had my share of experience with depression in the past, but it's safe to say that this is completely different. I'm trying to get past this girl that I really barely knew, but my brain is still stuck in that first, chemical stage of "love", and now I hardly recognize myself. I'd be lying if I said I really understood the depth of my reaction.
I've been deliberately vague on some details to confound google fu for reasons that aren't even really clear to me.
So, what kind of random bullshit has transformed you? Exactly how differently did you wake up, and did you ever feel yourself going back to "normal'? It doesn't necessarily have to be something negative.
PerfectStranger on
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I walked out of my freshman year of college as a sophomore english major with the ability to think thanks to one TA on his way to a doctorate. I had only half of the answers I once had.
I walked out of my senior year after taking another class with the same TA with none of the answers, an undergraduate in english, and a keen sense of what I didn't want to do, what I ultimately want to achieve in life but no understanding of how to go about it. I am more introspective because of him.
Such a positive and immensely influential in my life.
The short of it is: I was shot at and had IED/VBIEDs/Mortars explode around me, had a serious relationship end because I was deployed, losing friends to both war and separation from home, the sense of isolation, increase in anger and frustration and depression, coupled with the never ending feeling of "the worst day of my life" for 2 deployments; has put everything into perspective.
I realize what I'm made of and what I want to do with my life, and what it will take and what I will have to both give up and achieve to get there.
These days I am back to my normal life but sometimes I worry that everything is pointless.
I spent my freshman year as a print journalism major, having always loved to write. At the end of the year though, tormenting myself over grinding out a 25+ page research papers and articles and whatever else, I came to the conclusion that although I loved writing fiction for fun, I never ever wanted to write professionally as a journalist. Ever.
So, going back to my other love (science), I gave up my full tuition scholarship, transferred schools away from all the new people I'd just come to be good friends with, and changed majors to Electrical Engineering.
I took on an assload of coursework for two semesters (plus the summer) to catch up after my year of screwing around, but now I'm finally caught up with the curriculum, and it's so much more rewarding to tell people I'm an electrical engineer instead of a journalist.
I still remember the day I conclusively decided I would transfer, and I shudder to think how much different my entire life could have been if I hadn't. (Poor, miserable and exhausted from work instead of well off, happy, and exhausted from work :P)
The only reason we 'had' it was because one of the guys' (call him Andy) parents were getting divorced. The mom had run off with some guy, and the dad was just there less and less often until he stopped coming around at all. Come to find out months later he has another family a state over. All this was well and good at the time, since we wanted to party and whatnot. Even seriously considered buying the house.
Andy was the youngest of seven kids. His dad kicked us out the week before Christmas, when he was 18. He and I, along with another guy, got an apartment. While the other guy, myself, and our girlfriends were away on vacation the next summer, Andy hung himself in his closet. His best friend since 3rd grade came by to hang out and found him, at which point his girlfriend started screaming and the neighbors called the cops. They found some substances which led to me and the other guy on the lease being charged, and we lost the apartment.
Similar to the second post. Only worse in that I didn't go into Uni thinking I was above average intelligence, and on a good day, would be considered clever. I'm now in my MA and realise that I am fucking dumb. I test well... I apply myself sufficiently to the task at hand an i get the marks for it, but I am not smart, and in such a single minded focus on my English coursework i've realised how much my perceived smartness was dependent on grades. I've forgotten half the stuff I learned at GCSE, I got a decent pass mark, onto the next piece of work, wipe slate clean. My general knowledge utterly sucks. Even my direct knowledge of my course extends only to the work I am doing. People say 'Oh, you know alot about Shakespeare?' NO. I don't know much about even my field. I know what I know for the specific question at hand and then... poof... gone.
Alongside getting a job, I've learned how much I need to learn, and hope I manage to motivate myself enough to learn when i'm not being graded on it.
Other than that: Love. Glad I found it, and the fact that a) I actually forced myself to go to the freshers disco and b) did not go with friends or my asshat block ensured that I met the woman I love AND that she met me, and didn't judge based on acquaintances. That I miracuslously found her again even after she left without giving me her number. Thankfully I ended up talking to like, the only person in my university who went to school with her... and in a fluke occurence, I talked to this friend, she pointed out a girl who was reading and said she went to school with her. I said the most unceremonious goodbye to this girl ever in my rush to talk to the woman I had met previously. It would have been so easy to just miss her, and not see her again until such time when I was just 'oh, its a guy I met on the first night' just say hi in corridors kind of acquaintance. Best 4 years of my life since, despite the fact I realise that I may actually be considered stupid, rather than clever, in terms of my intelligence.
Of course, its thrown my clock way out of whack. I planned to be a guy who got a job that didn't suck incredibly hard, and just quest for love for most of my life - i was so confident i'd be the Chandler who just sucked at finding love. Now I have it, I have my life goal. Fuck. Now what do I do? I need an ambition? I really hadn't planned for the contingency of finding love so soon. Now I must devise a career goal i guess?
He was also an emotional drunk. He could be very sad, or very angry depending on his state of mind. Right about this time it was sad, very sad. He got to the point where he asked me, a 6 year old child, to go into the kitchen, grab a knife, and kill him. I was then screamed at for not doing what I was told.
I don't recall the details in between, but later on I was on a plane to Washington to stay with my aunt for a few months, since my mom feared for my safety.
My dad could never stop drinking, even when it was his weekend/holiday per custody arrangement. Most of the time, I just refused to go with him, knowing that I would just end up dealing with a drunk all weekend, and so he pretty much just became a minor nuisance in my life, but something I excluded purposefully.
My dad found out he had Cancer about 8 years ago, and was forced to stop drinking due to Chemo. After he wasn't drinking, he became a decent likable guy. He died, about a year after that.
Various experience with my dad pretty much caused me to stuff my emotions deep inside and just bottle everything up, and hide away from the world. I was very introverted, very shy, and completely socially inept.
I finally began breaking out of the shell during the latter years of High School, but moreso after I joined the Marines. You'd have to then, right?
See how many books I've read so far in 2010
I had a group of friends that developed in college. It wasn't necessarily a great group, and there was actually a lot of drama and backstabbing which I usually tried to stay out of. But there were a couple of cool people there, and when you get entrenched with a certain group it becomes harder and harder to break away and make new friends.
Shortly after graduation, one of the cooler girls was killed in a car accident. I don't remember the details, but a friend called me at work very upset and said that she got hit by a van, her car veered off the freeway, and hit a tree. She was knocked unconscious, and while unconscious her car caught fire and she burned alive.
The thing is, that while most people would expect a tragedy like this to bring people together, it actually led to the dissolution of my circle of friends. There was some comforting of each other at first, but then people's true colors started coming out, and a chain of events that started with the funeral led to everyone going their separate ways. There pretty much was no more hiding the fact these people I was hanging out with really weren't good people, and I had to distance myself from them and make some changes, find new friends and move on.
It's an event that I'm using as the basis for a novel right now. It's a difficult process because it's reopening some old wounds.
There have been a lot of bad things in my life. Love is miraculous because it defies the bleak conclusions that would otherwise follow.
I have been surprised by joy.
The first was the bad. I was a recluse through a lot of my childhood/teenage years. There's a history of mental illness in my family, and whilst I was in high school my mum had depression, my sister had OCD (which she blamed on me). I found it hard to get on with people my age because I'd been dealing with my family's head issues along with my father to try and keep everything together. I was on a lot of online communities instead. I was pretty good friends with some of the people I'd met, and one couple in particular I traveled to see in person once every few months. It was a reprieve from home. Through them I met a guy, who I ended up in a relationship with. Cut a long story short, he ended up raping me. On Valentine's day.
This pretty much twisted everything in my life around. I told my friends online, but they took no action, and even kept him on as an admin on their community. I distanced myself from the internet for a while and started building more friendships around me. The event had many MANY repercussions in terms of intimacy and trust with partners, but it made me consider the circumstance that led up to it. I'm pretty scarred, but I'm a lot more assertive and clear about myself now.
The second is more positive. After escaping my family home and going to University, I got into a relationship with my current boyfriend. It's a really strong relationship, and I'm getting past a lot of the damage caused by the above. We come from very very different backgrounds. My family is middle-classed, fairly affluent, whilst his has to scratch out every penny. Being with him has opened my eyes to a lot of my classed prejudices and privileges. My attitudes to life and values have changed. I feel like I know a lot less, and have none of the answers, but I'm more compassionate and less cloistered.
The less you know, the more you're learning.
My life was also changed when I asked Speaker's wife out and she said yes.
But seriously now:
Bad thing: Deciding not to finish school. I was depressed out of my mind, on the verge of a (in retrospect, entirely self-imposed) nervous breakdown and thought it was for the best. I was wrong.
Good thing: My best-friend (more like a brother) surprising the ever loving crap out of me and inviting me to church. It's been a rollercoaster ride of epic proportions but the sheer amount my life has improved is mind boggling.
STEAM
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STEAM
It's kind of silly to try and figure out whether it was a mistake or not though. Like you I was crazy and depressed and simply couldn't stand continuing with school at that time.
Don't downplay this for a bit. You had to basically decide to be a different kind of person from who you originally thought you were. Most people don't have the will to make this kind of big change in their life.
This was my experience as well. After the initial shock, everyone came together, but as time went on, they started to slowly tear each other apart.
Little less then a year ago I started to attend Virginia Tech because I thought I was smart as hell and thought I wanted to do engineering as a career. Just before my first set of midterms my parents tell me they're getting a divorce. Since I just moved to Virginia from Seattle I was a little cut off from pretty much anyone I could discuss just about anything important with.
I started to have mood swings and feel generally apathetic to pretty much everything, and ended up dropping two classes and still only barely getting a 2.1 GPA. However, this did make me realize how very very much I hated engineering, I hated the math, I hated the classes I had to take, the only class I really enjoyed that first semester was English. So second semester I took a bunch of PoliSci and history classes, and feel much happier. I'm now back in Seattle, getting ready to attend Bellevue Community College in preparation for transfer to the University of Washington. The house I grew up in is due to close on being sold on friday, and I'm currently helping my mom pay for rent in a duplex. My father cheated me out of $10,000 from the house and we don't talk anymore.
And yet I'm pretty sure I'm happier here in Seattle with my friends studying international relations then I ever would be failing math classes at VT.
After my second year of college, I got a temp job for an IT department for a large company, and hated every minute of it. Getting that job was the best thing that happened to me, because it made me realize that I was on the wrong track and I dropped the comp sci major right away. I wound up going into film and television, which, even though I saw it through to the end and graduated, seemed to have been the wrong choice, too. More satisfying but still wrong, as I never got a job in that field. So now I've been doing some soul-searching to figure things out and realized after enrolling in the local community college to test some classes out, realize that the creative desire is too strong and I like film and television more because of the creative aspect. So now I'm looking into getting a graduate degree in creative writing and seeing if I work this into a career.
That most recent part (enrolling in community college and soul-searching) started a year ago after another life changing event. I got involved in an affair. Now to be fair, I wasn't the one having the affair. She was cheating on her boyfriend with me, and when we initially hooked up, she led me to believe that she had broken up with him. I didn't put an end to things right away when I found out the truth, but I did eventually put an end to it. The whole event made me reflect and think of a few things. First, how exactly could I let myself get played like that? I had some serious confidence issues so that when she showed some interest in me, I didn't bother looking a gift horse in the mouth, just stuffed my dick in it. I had to do some reassessing of my whole life situation and think if I was really happy, which I wasn't. Then think about what I needed to change. I came to the conclusion that my job, while it paid well and I liked my coworkers, otherwise sucked, with long demanding hours with no overtime pay and leaving me without a life. And I had to start looking at what I really wanted to do, which led to me re-enrolling in school to look at getting a graduate degree. Second, I had to reassess myself. As I said, I've always been down on myself. While this girl of batshit crazy, it did lead me to realize that I'm more desirable than I thought I was. I mean, if I was the OTHER man, what kind of a dork was her boyfriend? I was pretty much a confirmed bachelor who was giving up hope on ever finding love. I realized that that may not be true, I just need to find the right girl, that a lot of these staying single issues were my own doing. I haven't completely gotten that hope back, but it is there. In that, I got more assertive, such as breaking things off with the girl, and having it out with my boss over the bullshit working conditions. It didn't go so well, as the girl stalked me for a while after that, and my boss tried to illegally get me fired, although HR stopped her when they realized I could have opened a can of whoopass on their bank account if she tried was she was trying. But being more assertive felt good, and I realized that I could be assertive without being a dick. If something was wrong, it was my responsibility to speak up and put a stop to it. And I didn't have to be trapped. I could change my life if I needed to. I could say "No."
I'm still working on taking some of this heart completely. Like I said, I had pretty much given up hope that love is actually out there for me, and it's not really back, but I guess there's still a spark there. I've made some changes like leaving my job, even when the next one wasn't confirmed, essentially take the risky leap to make necessary changes in my life. I recently went on a date with a really great girl which I hope will continue. And things move forward. The world moves on.
When I was a kid used to live in a small town right outside Paris, France.
Being a Jew, with a very Jewish name, my family and I were victims of constant harassment from our neighbors and I was personally persecuted by some of my teachers.
Things got to a point where my dad was falsely accused by one of our harassing neighbors of trying to run him over with his car, which was completely false, and never got to trial. When that failed, some of the neighbors actually attempted to assault me and my mom, and we were lucky to get away.
After literally years of abuse (It didn't start as violently as it ended, and my parents didn't recognize the abuse for what it was at the time) we fled the town and went to live in Paris, where we still met some instances of anti-semitism (although you do tend to grow a tough skin after a while).
At the time, my grandfather, who lived in Israel, died, and we came to the funeral, and we ended up staying.
I've been here for going on thirteen years, and I don't want to go back there, ever.
That was ten years ago. I've changed a lot since then. I'm now going back, starting an undergraduate degree in computer science in September. When I dropped out, that was never a decision - I simply couldn't do it. Going back, however, that was a difficult and life-changing decision.
a) I wanted to see Europe
b) I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
Six years later, I'm moving back home with a completely different mindset. I cant nail down one particular event that changed me other than that one initial decision to go find out who I was. Now I know.
I had known for a long time that I didn't believe in the religion and that a mission was wrong for me. The typical 'deadline' is the age 19, that's when they send them out for two years. I was afraid to tell my family that I didn't believe, because everyone I was surrounded by in my life was so excited about God and religion.
When I was 18 I told them I wouldn't be going on a mission and they kicked me out of the house that day. We have had a very rocky relationship ever since.
Wow. Kudos on your principles.
Edit: I was the one kayaking, not God. I hope that was clear enough.
See how many books I've read so far in 2010
GM: Rusty Chains (DH Ongoing)
Anyway, I too moved when I was 18. Moved in with my ex, and her best friend. We ended up switching roommates several times until one tried to stab another, when all was done and over with I was blamed for everything that had gone wrong, had almost everything stolen, (movies, game-cube, games) and left with more debt than I could shake a stick at.
A year or so later I decide it would be a good idea to move in with my best friend who is also a girl. Before I even moved in (the month the lease started I was delayed by work) her boyfriend had already moved in. Fine with me, except that he didn't pay anything, so I finally decided screw-it moved out of there and am doing okay.
I've come to the conclusion that I don't live well with people
2. The night a friend of mine busted into my house at 11 saying she had been raped.
3. Watching a friends brains get ejected out of the top of his head.
4. Constantly losing friends when I was younger due to being a military brat.
5. Losings friends to overdoses, car accidents, a helicopter crash, and my old drummer who just did not wake up one day.
I'm not going to elaborate, but venting once in a while helps. 'preciated.
You can thank God for the ability to detect ambiguity.
The job offer didn't happen and my fiance is now going to be a 7-year undergraduate. We're both totally broke and I'm fabulously unemployed, but I feel that when we look back, this will be one of the best things we've ever done.
Since you wrote about ejected brains in lieu of say, shot in the head or car-crash, I'm going to ask what happened.
If I offend you, sorry. Not my intention.
A guy held a gun up to the bottom of the jaw and took a shot.
Apparently my friend had a bad relationship with the guys sister a few years back. Yeah.
and you were there. I couldn't imagine how that would even impact someone.
Then I took Speech my sophmore year of class. Those first few weeks I hated it, I was terrified of speaking, and basically never made an effort to speak in class.
We where doing mock congress, where we basically acted as senators in class, and the teacher had noticed that I never spoke. So he basically said each day I had to ask at least 2 questions. I hated him, but did it.
Something kinda of clicked though. When we moved to doing speeches in class, I was a natural, and slowly that fear started dissapearing. It felt good not only being able to speak in front of people, but also actually being good at it.
I ended up joining the Speech and Debate team where i competed till the end of my senior year. I loved every moment of it, and won a bit of awards. It also sparked my love for politics and current events, and is what made me become a political science major.