Six years ago I left the retail management world for corporate hell.
Or so I thought.

-I actually haven't HAD to wear a collared shirt and tie since being here.

-I've gotten my hands on some pretty decent movies and music (free of charge).

- Better salary.

- Met great bunch of knucklehead co-workers.

So I lucked out for the most part, no?

Nice!

the world is actually pretty small.

When I was 22, a close friend, a house mate, a man with the best laugh I've ever heard (and can still hear), went out to a shooting range and shot himself in the head.

I learned then that there is something worse in the world than a broken heart, which is all I had previously known of pain.

Yeah, but I wouldn't want to paint it joelf.

For me, the main one was when I was 13 and my dad committed suicide. I was bummed of course, but more importantly, I learned
a) that at least he didn't get ripped off. He was done with life. And, at 45, I wasn't about to call him a quitter.
b) You never know when life will end, so live it, baby.

For the most part, I sit here 23 years later feeling pretty much the same on those fronts. Which is pretty impressive really. Not much else that I thought at 13 still rings true. For example, I no longer thing Def Leppard rules.

Everyday this happens - usually from some mistake of mine. The good news is that I don't retreat from it - I listen to my mistakes and make something better from them. You know, like thinking Def Leppard rules. I can walk away from that with my head held high.

Make no mistake; Def Leppard rules.

Def Leppard *rulz* actually.

While you all make a strong case, I still feel I need to disagree. They just don't rule. I'm not sure they ever did.

I was backstage at a Leppard show a few years ago. Alongside the opening act, The Unband (friends w/the bassist), my brother and I went topside for "Rock of Ages." I have been to the brink, seen the pits of fire, and Def Leppard still most definitely rulz.

slight clarification: the preconception thing applies to good things as well, or neither good nor bad things.

For me, I was bout 10, and I asked my dad why motorcycles were dangerous. He said it was because you're totally exposed. I said, "to what? the engine??" He said, "NO! to other cars!" It had never occurred to me that it was the stuff around the motorcycle that was dangerous. I figured it was because sitting directly on top the engine - which is basically controlled explosions - was the issue.

I had been to the zoo before. It is not like I hadn't. But I had never seen swans. I was devastated. Seriously, hurt, perplexed and embarrassed. All the books I had seen pictures they made them look so large... As large as a cow for instance. Then I realized the "books" where my childhood fairy-tales. I was 29.

All throughout my childhood, and on into my adulthood, my dad was an absolute bastard. He left my mom when I was 7, and I saw him every few weeks for a few years after that. When my siblings and I were at his house, and he wasn't screaming at us, he was in his room with the door closed, working or drinking or pretending we didn't exist. There was more to it that I don't really feel like sharing right now. He really liked to hand out the abuse. When I was 11, he told me that he wished I'd never been born. When I was 14 or 15 I decided I never wanted to see him again.

And when I was 22, I nearly became a father myself, to twins. And I realized when I was facing that, thinking back on my father from that adult perspective, that my dad & I are identical in so many ways. We're smart, extremely introverted, perpetually depressed, and most importantly, we frequently just shut down and refuse to deal with everything. But I knew, at the time, that I felt the same way that he must have felt when my mom told him that she was pregnant with me. I knew how scared he must have been, how uncertain of what to do he must have been. And I realized that I wouldn't have been quite as mean were I in his shoes, but I definitely would have been an equally distant father. In that understanding, that epiphany, I forgave him.

A few years later, he came up to visit, and we got drunk. He's actually a pretty cool guy now, and we get along.

*knows cmonkey doesn't like to be hugged, gives him an affectionate punch in the shoulder instead*

Thanks, pup.

Nice story, cmonkey! And richat, I didn't mean to diminish the gravity of your experience. Y'all are some wonderful folks.

One day I'll be able to articulate my thoughts and questions as well as you guys do. I keep hoping it will rub off on me.

Epiphanies? I've had a few, but then again, too few too mention... lallala...

Wait, that's not what I wanted to sing!

Quite a few, really. Here are some highlights:

Between 17 - 19, I learned the trick of what I think of as "sinking into confidence". We could have a whole 'nother huge post about what this means, but it changed and redirected me, and made a lot of things possible that would never have happened if I hadn't put a few observations together and essentially decided "you are as you act".

In my early 30s, having had my trust and love betrayed in a very serious relationship (relatively long marriage), I had to select to trust again, and being a once-burned-1,000-times-shy sort, it was quite a leap. But the epiphany was that unless I did make that choice (for real - no lip-service thingydingy), even at the risk of being twice burnt, I wouldn't be the sort of person who was worthy of the sort of love I required (wrong word. "Needed" isn't right either. "Wanted" is too weak. Anyway.)

One of the most electrifying of epiphanies for me is a story really too mundane to tell, but it had to do with an act of kindness by my husband (before he was my husband) towards a stranger. It was so natural and without any sort of calculation or hesitation or really any thought at all... just a reflexive thing, and in a situation where it would have been much easier and cozier-wit-da-cool-people not to act (and, in fact, to mock... but OMG! he's cooler than the cool people, lol!). It split my heart wide open, changed me forevermore for the better, and made me fall so insanely in love with him, that I'm still reeling, 16 years later. I was kind before, in many ways, but this brought me to a whole new level.