Life Changing Experiences

Have you ever had one?

I have. On my way to work one morning about a year ago, I had to walk past this guy who had been knocked off his motorbike by a car, and been killed. He was laying out on the road with a white sheet over him as the Cops were investigating the scene. I wasnt emotionally bothered by what I was seeing, but it was a definate slap in the face, it got me thinking about how short life can be. That guy was just on his way to work one morning, probally had just kissed his wife goodbye 20 minutes earlier, was going out to make a living for his family, and all of that changed in less than a second. His family was never going to see him again, he was no longer to do any of the things he had planned for the rest of his life, it was a real wake up call to me, that I need to stop wondering, and just do things. Unfortunatley, I havent implemented that philosopy fully in my life as of yet, but after writing up that piece in the 'Girlfriends' topic, and thinking about this instance, I am going to, I need to.

So yeah, have you ever had any life changing experiences before?

 

Plenty, one of which I can't share here because I have no proof of the incident and nobody would likely believe me either.

One life changing experience of mine came in twos. First part came when I was around 16. I was severely overweight and eating too much bad food like McDonald's and other fast food places. One day I just basically stopped because I felt very sick quite often. Then the final piece came around 19 when I seen that despite dropping the fast food and exercising more often I couldn't lose much if any weight. It all had to do with not drinking water and build up in the colon, which could ultimately have killed me any day.

I had a colon clense for two months and started drinking four bottles of water every day. I limited myself to orange juice as a specialty drink for lunch and only one soda, if any at all, just for or around dinner time. I kept doing moderate exercises and within a few months I lost nearly 100 pounds. Now after two years I went from 336 lbs to 220 lbs. If I wouldn't have worked out I probably would be much lighter then that, but I gained more muscle. I knew that if I didn't change my way of life I probably would've either died of a heart attack, stroke, diabeties or some other related factor to being overweight once you reach your 30's. Thankfully, I'm only 23 and I feel great now.

One thing I should note: You have to be cautious when drinking sodas and eating heavy meals because the drug in sodas called High Fructose Corn Syrup cuts off signals from the stomach to the brain. This will prevent your stomach from telling your brain that you are full and so you may overeat and not even know it. I found that this is one of the key factors to obesity today. Be sure to know your limits first.

 

I've had two that really changed my life.

My grandfather died in a car accident a few months before I was born. He only got to meet one of my cousins, who is now 19. The guy that caused the accident was drunk.

When I was about 4, my dad's cousin lost her oldest daughter (about 12 years old in a car accident, again caused by a drunk driver. The driver is the uncle of a girl that plays basketball at our rival school. Her parents always look away when they see us.

I know that when I'm drunk, will NEVER get in a car with someone thats plastered. And I will never drive myself. I couldn't live with that guilt.

 

about 5-6 years ago, i was a juvenile deliquent and have been in trouble MANY times. a police officer brought me to prison to show me what life was like in there. never been in trouble ever since.

i have more but i'd like to hear others' first.

 

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Found out my parents are getting a divorce, and because of the reasons they are getting a divorce, I realized I could never,ever play a girl I'm with.

 

<div class="quote_poster">M Two One Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Plenty, one of which I can't share here because I have no proof of the incident and nobody would likely believe me either.</div>

You can't say that and not tell. Now I wanna know.


As for me, I don't know if it were life changing at the time or at all, but when i was about 7 or 8 me and my brother thought it would be smart to ride our bikes around the outside of our house and the pool.
The bike I was on was too big for me and I lost balance next to the pool and fell in the deep end. At this stage I could not swim so I was pretty bad off.
Luckily for me my brother jumped in and saved me.

But I look back on it and it makes me wonder how lucky I am.

 

<div class="quote_poster">Mamba Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Wait...are you the dad of Anna Nicole's baby? </div>

Damn man, how'd you know?

<div class="quote_poster">Quoting I-Miss-MJ:</div><div class="quote_post">You can't say that and not tell. Now I wanna know.</div>

Alright, but I'm going to make this as more of a rant.

I grew up in a pretty crappy neighborhood apartment complex on the south side of Chicago since the age of 1 and for the early parts of my youth that I can remember the place wasn't so bad. When I went into the teens the good people or at least decent people started moving out and more of the bad started to drift in. I'm explaining going from single moms that lived there for financial purposes until they could move out to a better place and in their place came "single moms" who date drug dealers and have a new kid every year basically. The violence increased and just about every night you'd have to suffer through drunken cocaine addicts blasting their music downstairs until 3 or 4 in the morning.

Thing is that in May of last year my Mom and I finally moved out to a nice quiet place, only thanks to the death of my grandmother who was one of the only good people left in the family that hadn't died from cancer. Yet, she did die exactly from that and had to suffer for two months wasting away. Gaining a lot of her money from the will she left doesn't exactly make me feel all too great because had she not died we would still be living in that apartment complex and I'd have still been miserable. It makes me feel that I'm in a better place because she had suffered.

The apartment itself wasn't bad though. The structure inside was nicely designed and of course I'd become used to it after living there my entire life basically. The view I had outside was great with a huge tree just in front that hosted rare woodpeckers and squirrel families quite often. Then outside in the fire lane there were a lot of trees and great views as you may have seen from pictures I took from my last winter there. It really was beautiful. If you haven't seen them, here are a few below.



I miss my old apartment for the fact that it was really my only home most of my life and the surrounding area was really cool when you avoid the lunatics and their mess. I can't even begin to express what all went on there, but we kept our place clean though. Believe it or not a few years ago I saved the building from a fire when a mother next door to us decided it would be just perfectly fine to leave her greased chicken frying on the stove top while she took a shower and left her three kids near the kitchen. Had I not been staying up that night until 1 AM, yeah cooking chicken at 1 in the morning, that place "would've been gone" with me included because "this was a grease and gas fire" from what I learn by the fireman I spoke to that night.

I remember the night - I was listening to music (more on that later) and I smelled something strange coming from the AC vents and when I went into the hallway I seen smoke flowing through the light fixtures and heard kids crying. I called the fire department afterward and woke up my Mom then went next door and banged on the woman's door as hard as I could to see if she'd come over. When she finally came to the door she was screaming in panic butt naked and the place was pitch black with arid smoke and though I knew I couldn't do much with the fire extinguisher I knew I had to get her kids out so I did. They suffered so much in that smoke that one of them threw up all over me.

When the police arrived they rushed upstairs and when I wanted to get back in to save my pet the guy yells to me, "listen, that doesn't matter get down now damnit!" I was pissed off, my pet could've died burning to death had the fire reached our apartment just next door. Though the damage reached around $50,000 it only affected that women's kitchen, dinning room, the attic and inner roof of the building and the walls from her neighbors underneath turned dark brown. The most jacked up thing of all that? The fat ass woman on the first floor that is "the head" of the building, who can't even walk upstairs mind you, took the credit for saving the building. The woman I saved never spoke up and was kicked out. I don't care for some fireman's jacket of reward, I was just pissed that woman had the nerve to do that knowing had I not done anything they'd all be dead to this day.

My main point of any of this is that when I was in France I received a call from my Mom telling me that when she drove by the place she noticed someone else was finally moved in. The place was filthy already with basically rags hanging down for curtains and the walls were yellow and everything. To me that is basically my home being trashed by people and though I'm not there it still effects my emotions from all the crap I went through there and there's nothing I can do about it anyway.

As for the music, that's the craziest part of the whole thing. I was listening to VAST's track "Flames" on my headphones and when it got to the verse "I feel flames, again" mid-way through, that's when I smelled that weird scent coming from the AC vents and reacted. Of course the song isn't actually about fire, but that verse coming up at that moment was and still is shocking to me. Now I think of how sad the song goes the rest of way through after that verse, it could've been my last.

This is the song and that's my rant/life changing experience.

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^ that must've been tough...

 

damn that is one crazy story and you are lucky to be alive.
Do you believe in fate or things that happen for a reason?

but why wouldn't we believe you? I was thinking more aliens. lol.

 

Because the fire never made the headlines (to my knowledge) and I can't show proof. I don't understand why it never made it to the news though because there were news teams there. At least I assume they were. When someone broke word to them that I was the one who called and helped those kids out of their apartment then they were all over me. There were five or six cameras in my face while they interviewed me and I thought I'd be all over the local news the next day. There was nothing on TV, but I never checked the papers.