I feel like my life changes with every strike of a minute on a clock. Of course I have had many life altering situations that turned my course in the most shocking ways. And each taught me survival at its most basic. Who can relate?

Trauma

"Traumatic Brain Injury."

- Zeliv

"Me too! This was five years ago. There is just Before and After."

- GloomyCamel6050

Mom

"Having to break the news to my mother that my brother passed away in an accident."

- SereneNectarine

"Man... I had to tell my mom when my brother was shot and in emergency surgery. I can't imagine having to actually tell her that. Thats terrible. You did something incredibly strong though. Godspeed."

- GanonSmokesDope

Sorry...

"First brain surgery. It lead to me losing the career I had spent years training and studying for. I had just made it to the point where I had people calling me to offer me work. (Dream come true, that.) I remember the last such phone call, "No, I cannot come work for you next month. Craniotomy. Sorry." I had just enough neural deficit that I could no longer do that type of work. I lost the replacement career I had built after the second brain surgery."

- TimeSovereign

Loss...

"The death of my mom when I was 14. It's such a clear divide that it seems like that was a completely different person."

- madcats323

"I lost a parent at 15. It's hard to put into words how fundamentally you shift from that kind of experience. I'm fortunate to have had another before and after: when I completed my first round of EMDR."

"It sounds weird, but it felt like someone untied a knot that I had in my brain - a knot that had been there for so long that I hadn't even realized there was tension so deep inside of me. I hope healing has come your way too. 🖤".

- pennywhistlesolo

Dry

April 26, 2018. My sober life began. (I now consider that to be my birthday).

- 93WhiteStrat

Each new day, is a new chance. Maybe we should lead with that idea. What can we learn about life before and after is more valuable that elementary education. Anyone agree?

rebuilding...

"Definitely after losing my dad in 2016. There is a clear distinction of who I was before he died to who I am now, I had to rebuild myself because the grief absolutely destroyed me."

- MsScarletsLeadPipe

Same Boat

"Failing a marriage and the subsequent realisation of all my mental problems that both caused it and were heavily exacerbated by it. It's a really strange feeling of being completely alone yet at the same time being in the same boat as literally millions of people. I guess thanks for being alone with me, guys."

- Mister_McGreg

March 2016

"I escaped my adopters in March 2016. They were psychopaths who emotionally and mentally (and sometimes physically) abused me. The male adopter was a drunk and he would often drag me out of bed even on school nights to wrestle with me. I was adopted at 15 after going through foster care. I am 26 now and left that life behind. That was certainly the before. I am now engaged to marry my fiancé soon and living with her in a few weeks. I am doing so much better. Idk where I would be if I had stayed there."

- AdrianValistar

Best Excuses For Late Assignments That Were Actually True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

1992

"At 17 when I told my social worker, I wanted to leave my "family" who did their best to impose their backward honor culture on me. I knew I would be human trafficked at 18 (arranged marriage against my will). Within 6 weeks I was in a group home and never looked back, this was in 1992."

- stubbornasf**kNL

Alive

"My husband getting cancer and dying changed EVERYTHING. There was a before and I am living in the after."

- wickedrelatable

Crap Away

"When I realized how little I meant to my "family" and decided to not accept their crappy behavior anymore."

- ibetammi

"I left 80% of my crap family behind 25 years ago. I haven't missed them, and they've gone on being crappy people without me. I haven't missed any of them."

- rushaz

Move On

"Finding out my husband cheated, finally leaving, raising two kids alone."

"It was really rough… But I did it."

- Dianachick

Dropped

"Losing 160 pounds."

- rosetintedmonocle

Like Barry

"Got dumped, decided to give college a try to meet women. Now it's 2 degrees and a wife later. Just to clarify people, not like I had this great ambitious plan to get educated in a hot field. I started college to meet women. If the women were in barbershop quartets, I'd have found 3 other guys and dressed like an old time barber. It's kind of like Barry when he found he liked acting. I found I was pretty good at these math, engineering and IT classes."

"My best advice is don't follow my path to success. Remember step #1 to my plan is the be deeply, madly in love and be headed to the altar for marriage after 3 years when she calls it off and you give her a few days and then go to talk to her but find her with another guy already. I'd have gladly skipped step #1 if I could have."

- mayoroftheed

Charter Abuse

"Working in a charter school. I am mentally scarred from that experience. It was severely underfunded, like many charter schools. The teachers had to cover just about everything themselves. More than teachers already do. I was there just over a year and we went through 4 principals, one of which was fired for beating up one of the children. They would implement procedures and force us to use them and then would forget about them a week later."

"They treated the children like prisoners. The children were wonderful, but they needed much more help than the teachers were able to provide with the resources they had. All of my students lived in poverty and many of them had behavioral problems. I regularly had students destroying the classroom or starting fights."

"One child set another child on fire (though to be fair, it was an accident and no one got hurt. We were able to extinguish the fire before it burned more than his clothes.)n I did the best I could with what I had but by the end of it I was so burned out and exhausted that I became a shadow of myself. I was living in a fog. It took over a year for me to really be able to feel human again and another year after that for me to consistently feel happy."

- talibob

Love Story

"Marriage."

- tobeornotobe

"Same here. I tried for years to "learn to love myself before I love someone else", but then I realized that is total nonsense for a person like me."

"Without a partner, I'm not complete. I don't function at full speed or ability."

"I can be okay as a single person, but I can never be great. I have good memories from before marriage, but the reason I remember them so fondly is that the rest of my life was so difficult. Now every day is a new good memory."

- CrushHazard

Clean

"Finally getting sober March 29, 1987, age 34."

- letterzz

A few thoughts...

1. My parents divorce.
2. Moving the hell out of Florida for good... on my own. Twice with the second time sticking.
3. My little brother's death.

"Each of those moments sticks out in my mind as different versions of myself and to look back and see the person I've become now... It's kinda mind blowing."

- Pranksterette

The Light Went Out

"The death of my best friend. I'm happy. I've got a good life. It's been long enough that I remember him with smiles and laughter rather than tears. But his absence has colored everything since. After nearly 11 years, I still see something funny and my first thought is to send it to him. I got married in 2019, and it was wonderful... but he wasn't there to be my fabulous Maid of Honor like he'd always said he would be. A light went out in my life that day that will never be rekindled."

- Lachwen

The Not Fun

"There's 'before my mom got sick' and 'after my mom passed away.' There's also 'before I got hit by the car' and 'after I got hit by the car.' I'm fun at parties."

- SagiTsukiko

Life is precious. Let's just walk away with that truth, if nothing else. Who we are will always change.