What Single Event Had the Biggest Impact on Your Life ?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Four years ago, my little twin sisters, Lauren and Bethany, were diagnosed with autism. I’m nineteen now; they’re six and a half. This has changed my life completely, and will alter it forever. For the better? Yeah, I think so.

It’s one of those things that you just can’t imagine happening to yourself. You think you’d have a nervous breakdown, or just die. Funny the way it happens, though. It comes on so quietly that you barely notice it. By the time you’ve got the diagnosis, you know these kids. They belong to you. They’re not some scary, crazy strangers suddenly thrust upon your family. They’re your sisters; you understand them, you adore them. In this way, it’s much more bearable than it would seem.

Yeah, life is difficult with autistic kids. And yes, my life is going to be vastly different than I had planned. I’m restructuring my future around financial solidarity rather than the very non-lucrative science I had been planning on. I’ll need to help my parents with these girls. I want them to have a good life, with everything they need. It’s not going to be easy, but I can deal with it, because it comes on slowly, quietly.

Some of the things I used to take for granted, before Lauren and Bethany:
[li]Going on vacations–can’t do that now.[/li][li]Being able to have a house with a nice, decorated interior, where everything doesn’t have to be nailed down, unbreakable, and washable.[/li][li]Having a keyboard that isn’t always sticky[/li][li]Going to restaurants[/li][li]Going shopping whenever (for us, it’s only if there’s an immediate family member available to babysit)[/li][li]Being able to invite people to my house[/li][li]Not being constantly terrified that one of the kids is going to escape (from the house, from the playground, from the immediate area)[/li][li]Not having to explain to strangers why my six year old sister just stole their kid’s milkshake[/li][li]Not having to explain to mall security guards why my six year old sister is screaming at the top of her lungs as I try to drag her out to the car[/li][li]Not having to pray, pray every night before I go to bed that there isn’t a melted popsicle or an emptied can of pop, or worse, between the sheets. If the sheets are still there.[/li]
Lots more, too. It’s a trial, but it’s all worth it when you see their smiles, and hear their laughs, and understand that “autism” doesn’t at all mean “cold and remote and subhuman.”
Parents, cherish your little kids’ talking. Yeah, they go on, and on, and on, but what I wouldn’t give to hear Lauren and Bethany do the same.

Oh, and NM–yet another great thread. :slight_smile:

22

I’m only talking about this since no one here knows me…at least I hope not.

About ten years ago, my then-best friend dumped her very wonderful boyfriend to go out with my childhood love. This in itself was a lot to handle. Imagine the two people you hold dearest betraying you. My insecurities about my looks, my personality, my worthiness as a friend and my potential as a girlfriend, my overall value as a human being, for godsakes!.. all these uglies came up and hit me all at once. I’d never thought of suicide before or known depression until then. I’d let my morbid thoughts flow. What would the blood look like if I cut myself in the bathtub and let it trickle into the water? And on and on. It sounds silly to get so twisted up over a childhood incident, but at the time, it was monumental.

If that didn’t suck enough, the relationship quickly turned abusive. On both sides. It was inconceivable to a lot of people that a girl could abuse her boyfriend. Not so. How they stayed together for almost four years is beyond me. I’ve never known two people to physically and psychologically f*ck each other over more. I was in the middle of it, being a “friend” to each of them. Needless to say, it was hell.

Long story short: they broke up eventually, each moving on to lead highly dysfunctional lives. I came away with -let’s face it- a new personality. Not that I was a bitch before, but I came away with a sense of awareness of other people’s feelings. I became more conscious of the impact of my actions and words. I treated my friends better, since I’d learned how easy it is to start putting them through shit. Crappy way to become a better person, but I did. I survived their shit without adopting a “well, f*ck it ALL!” attitude. I’ve since surrounded myself with people who AREN’T like them. And I love them for that.

23

The biggest impact on my life was getting kicked out of high school at the end of my freshman year, and oddly, it was a positive impact. I just didn’t fit in at St. Ed’s… Every year, there’s one kid who bears the brunt of everyone else’s tormenting, and that year, it was me. St. Ed’s policy for dealing with such situations was to get rid of that one kid, problem solved. Of course, that wasn’t the reason they quoted, but it was the real reason.

Meanwhile, having been kicked out of one high school, I went looking for another. The only one that would take me on such short notice, and given the circumstances, was Benedictine, which I had never even considered. Benedictine, as it happens, is the best high school in the city, by any objective measure, and I thrived there. If any of you dopers have a son in the Cleveland area, and are looking for a high school, I can recommend Benedictine wholeheartedly.

24

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Kinsey *
**

I have and did. When I was 23 I hired a detective to find him. This man gave me a phone number and address. I must have picked up that phone 20 times and put it back down again. One night I decided it was time to finally put my questions to rest. I called him. We spoke for about an hour. Two things etched themselves in my mind far after the phone call. . .

The first was his excitement to know if I played sports. It was as if the man wanted me to say I had changed my name to Chipper Jones or Derrick Jeter. Needless to say, I had not. The disapointment was obvious even over the phone. I suppose while he had fantasized about his long lost son being a sports star, I was much more basic in my wonderings. I remembered very short clips of him. None of them were good. I had no illusions that this man was now Donald Trump or some great humanitarian.

The second sting was when his now wife got on the line and informed me “it’s just like we have had another child”. Another child ? Excuse me, but I have been here all along, I did not just pop out. Further, I do not know you - either one of you - and I can safely say it would take a lot of time and healing before I would consider myself a child of yours.

These two issues led me to believe that maybe my life would be just as good - if not better without him in my life, I had made it this far and all. I never called back. I should add that I gave him my number and address and I never heard from him either. Somewhere in the world I have two stepsisters I will never know. That fact hurts me far more than never knowing him.

Life goes on . . .

25

I just wrote about this elsewhere, but as a single event, it’d have to be going to see They Might Be Giants perform at the Cotton Club in Atlanta in the summer of 1988. Not because the show itself was life-changing, though it was quite good, but because I met my wife that night. I went with a college acquaintance who was rooming with me for the summer, and the rest of the group was made up of his grad school friends, plus my wife, who was a very close friend of one of them and was in town visiting and interviewing for jobs.

It’s a miracle she was there at all, since she hates loud music, smoke, and rock music generally. Those things worked to my advantage, however, since when I wandered outside onto the sidewalk to cool off a bit, she went along to escape the noise and smoke and we struck up a great conversation. I’ve never really identified what is was that caused us to click, since we have absolutely no common tastes or interests whatever. I was making almost no money at the time and was living what came to called a “grunge” lifestyle, I smoked and drank more than I should’ve, I wasn’t Jewish, I was a recently lapsed literary academic, and I was far from ready in any way to settle down. She was well-off financially, her tastes ran to Broadway musicals, anything Disney, romance novels, and things neat, clean, and well-ordered in general. She was Jewish and was eager to get married to someone Jewish and start a family – indeed, she considered herself informally engaged to a college boyfriend who later became a rabbi.

In any case, she made such an impression on me that despite the obvious impossibility of our ever dating, I continued to think about her from time to time, and was quite pleased to find a couple of months later that she had taken a job in Atlanta and moved in with her friend’s parents. She got talked into going out to my favorite Irish pub shortly afterward with more or less the same group from the first time we’d met, and we once again got along famously, getting somewhat more physically friendly than before thanks to the effects of copious amounts of alcohol on both sides (nothing more than one would expect in a very public environment – a little kissing and snuggling – but it represented a major breakthrough for me, having just endured nearly two years of grad school-induced celibacy).

She made a concerted effort to put me off for months afterward, but only as a potential romantic partner. Our increasingly frequent and increasingly lengthy phone conversations were amazing. While we didn’t officially “go out together” for quite a while, we got to know each other pretty intimately over the phone.

Things came to a head at Halloween. I’d stayed home from work with a horrible cold, and she came by my apartment to check on me, still dressed in the old hag/witch costume she’d worn to school (she was a schoolteacher) that day. I felt miserable, and she was made up to look as unattractive as possible, and still the mutual attraction was so palpable that we could barely stand it. Nothing happened then, but we both knew that it probably would, probably soon. By Thanksgiving, we were fully involved, and she broke up with her college boyfriend (who lived several hours away) during a Christmas-time trip to Florida.

We had our ups and downs, particularly through the first few years, but the longer we went on together, the more convinced I became that I wanted to stay with her for the rest of our lives. I still had a long way to go to be professionally, financially, and emotionally ready to marry, however, while she was no less eager than she’d ever been to marry and start a family. Wanting to be in a position to marry her gave me the motivation to straighten out my finances, succeed in my work life, and develop the maturity to be a worthy partner for her. One of the proudest moments of my life was when I bought her engagement ring with cash I’d saved over the previous year – not long before, I’d been so irresponsible financially I’d lived without electricity or a phone for months at a time. By the time we married, almost exactly eight years after we met, we were in a position to buy a house solely on the basis of my credit and plan for her to stay home with the kids we expected to have (and did have, the first being most likely conceived on our wedding night). I’m constantly grateful that she saw enough potential in me to put off her dreams of marriage and kids long enough for me to catch up with her.

26

5 years ago my sister was killed - and that is the one event that has dramatically changed me, my life and everything. She was three years older than me and although we fought all the time when we were kids we had become good friends as we grew up into our late teens. When she died, she took a part of me with her that I know I will never get back. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t mope and mourn every day - I just know I am a different person from who I would have been if she were still here.

In a way I am a better, stronger person, but only because I have had to be. I still carry huge feelings of guilt as I was with her shortly before she was killed, but I went home early. The times I wished I had just stayed with her.

But I know ‘what ifs’ are silly, and I should go on with life with a better attitude. If anything, my sisters death should teach me to live every day as if it’s my last, experience everything and live life to the max! I’m trying, really I am!

Love Ya Sis!! :slight_smile:

27

Telling my Dad when he was comotose with flat brain waves that my Cousin needed his help. He sat up and I didn’t have the guts to try and wake him up. He died a week or so later.

28

That would be my marriage. Specifically a night in the middle of the marriage that, for various reasons I won’t go into here, I could feel myself going insane, and only the hand of God was able to pull me out of that abyss. Took me another two years to work up the courage to leave, but that was the turning point for me. By the time the divorce was final, I was a completely different – and much better – person.

29

I think for me it would probably the relationship I had with my ex-boyfriend.

He was a complete and utter asshole who (unintentionally) taught me to stand up for myself and not take any shit.

30

The death of my favourite aunt, in 1996. She was only 49.

It made the most impact, because it was then that I realised that life is nothing but a fucking lottery. If a person like her gets 4 massive inoperable brain tumors at that age, then there is only one thing to conclude: Life isn’t fair.
Cancer? Merely a disease to keep the numbers down. There was the Plague, there is AIDS. Just natures way of keeping this planet inhabitable.

Life is still very beautiful though. And I’m living every minute to the absolute max.

"Life’s good, but not fair at all"
– Lou Reed

31

Wow. What an interesting thread.

It may sound cheesy, but my first big life turning event was playing football in high school. I had been a geek/wallflower before I went out for the team my sophomore year. Needless to say, I was picked on relentlessly by all and sundry. It took a year or two, but I eventually wiped the field with the guys who had made fun of me, simply because I spent my summers working out while they sat around and drank beer. The whole experience gave me the first sense of self-worth and self-respect I had ever known. It was the first time that I was good at something that “mattered.” It all seems a little strange and small-time now, but hey, everybody starts to build their life and find out what they’re made of somewhere. For me it was on my high school’s football practice field.
There were other things that happened to me later, but this was the first one. I still remember my coaches fondly. They thought I was a little strange,(I wasn’t raised to be an athlete or a redneck, which made me really stick out) but they treated me fairly and were my only father figures.

32

My fathers complete disappearence from my life at age 6. He still lived in the same town, but could not fit fatherhood into his busy drinking schedule.

33

The death of my father when I was 15. I had to go back to living with my mother. Lack of funds for college and a desire to get away from my mother made me decide to enter the Air Force.

Eventually I was assigned to Korea, where I met my wife. We now have 2 kids, none of which would have happened if my father hadn’t died.

34

When I was 17, I applied for my first “real” job, a Tech Support position at Kaypro. I had done a lot of coding as a hobby, and when I interviewed with the VP of Eng, he said, “you know we have other positions than Support; are you interested in Development?” I said, “I’m just trying to get my foot in the door; I’ll stick with Support.”

In Support, I met someone who I would start a business with a couple of years later and work at for 6 years. Also in Support, I met someone who invited me to move to Silicon Valley and join Novell many years later. At Novell, I met my wife to whom I’ve been happily married for 7 years and have 2 great kids with. At Novell, I also met someone who got me involved in my first high-tech startup.

So now everything that’s important in my life, wife, kids, silicon valley startups flowed from one spur-of-the-moment decision almost 20 years ago. Who knows what life would be like if I would’ve picked the other path?