Choices we made in the past are the foundation of what we are today.
We are all the sum of our choices.
Good or bad. All of our choices have made us what we are.
All true.
We are also the result of fate, sometimes.
7/16/08 I was in an accident that killed me. Literally, coded six times - in the ditch, on the life-flight helicopter, and on the table. Surgeon came right out and told me a year after "man, we all (in the E.R.) thought you were going to leave in a bag."
I went to work that day...and didn't come home for nearly six months.
Part of my internal injuries included 2 closed-head brain traumae - swelling, bleeding and bruising to my stem, and to my frontal lobe. Coordination....and emotion/personality.
We all change. We all make choices. Those choices bring about gradual change in our lives and personalities. These injuries....were a global shift in who I am, how I thought, how I felt, how I behaved...and they were
instantaneous. I came to in the hospital 2 weeks after the accident, and my first thoughts were "where am I" and "who the hell is inside my head". It was
years of therapy coming to terms with the fact that a) I was never going to get "myself" back again, and b) that was O.K., and I just had to make the best of who I'd become in the blink of an eye.
I am nowhere I ever thought I would be in life.
I am no longer married. I was when I had the accident...but apparently it was too much for her. I
had to keep forging ahead; she chose not to. I was pissed at the time. Extremely angry. I still probably wouldn't piss on her head if her hair was on fire...but the anger is gone. I see her all the time anyway - she's currently married to one of my drummers (I work with live bands, when the world is open for business). Whatever. Just another landmark, on the highway of life.
My life has gone down a completely unexpected path. I cherish every memory I have - good AND bad - because I know those memories can be wiped out in the blink of an eye. My life has been good to me - this new path is not a 'bad' one, it's just not anything I ever expected myself to be doing, or a place I ever expected to be in.
I am extremely lucky, on many fronts...not the least of which, simply still being alive.
Cherish everything, good AND bad. It can ALL be taken away from you in an instant.
Trust me.
I've been there.