I think everyone is guilty of thinking their life can not get any worse then it is.  A year ago I had a roommate move in that over 8 months taught me the value of life and of friends.  After that I start trying to look up my old high school friends on facebook.  I was able to get in touch with a couple of them.  Back on Easter I talked with a friend that I had not seen in 12 years.  The last time I spoke with him he basically denounced my life choices and and told me basically we could not be friends.  12 years later when him and I spoke he told me about how wrong he was and we basically became friends again.


Tonight I met up with another friend from high school.  I have been kind of depressed over how my life has turned out.  I basically learned tonight that my problems, trials, and tribulations were very minor in the grand view of the world.  My friend basically was told a year ago that without a heart transplant he was going to die.  He cannot get on the list for a transplant until he gets his diabetes under control (A1c number under 6.5, he is at 9-10) and he needs to get his body weight down to 255 (he is at 300ish now).  Once those things happen he will get ON the list for a heart transplant.  Until then he basically is just waiting to die which his doctors told him WILL happen.  My friend is 32 years old, he was told this when he was 26 how his life was going to progress and each year he progresses closer to the grave.


Tonight was a very humbling experience and it has me rethinking the things I use to think were horrible problems.  It has all been put into perspective.


Everyone you know is a link to your past and proof that you did in fact exist.  Everyone should look up an old friend, some one you may not have spoken to in over a decade, and meet up for a beer or dinner.  I have been regrounding myself in this world and looking at things in a completely different light for the last year.  Tonight has me looking at things completely different yet again.

My days as a nightcrawler when i was a kid often led me into bizar and weird situations.
One event has matured me, and to this day rules my day to day life.

I watched an old man jump off an overpass (small bridge) right as i passed him. It was 4am and i was riding my bike home.
I was to late to stop him from jumping... it all happend so fast.
I ran down to see how he was doing. He didn't die immediatly but i could see he had serious head trauma.
He tried to speak but he didn't have the strength no more, and he died when i was holding him. I still remember it like it was yesterday even though it's well over 20 years now. To this day i can't explain it, but i started shaking the poor man, as if to try and wake him up.
seconds felt literaly like hours... i think i sat there looking at him for maybe 15minutes, probably in shock. I had never even seen a dead person before, not even a dead relative. I felt the inevitability of it all... A million thoughts passed through my head, i don't believe i blinked more then 5 times in those 15 minutes. The police arrived and at first were confused, and started asking me questions straight away. One of the officers however could see in my eyes that i was struck by the whole ordeal. The officer in charge had called me in a few more times during the following weeks. Once to get my statement, and two more times just to follow up on me. At that time i was a young kid, barely 18 living on my own. I was so moved by it all, that i didn't speak much for 6 weeks. I later learned that the man didn't have any family, only a daughter who he lost contact with... No neigbours that cared, no one in the capital of a country that could give a rats ass about the man.
To think out of a dozen bypassers, i was the only one that stopped...

Eventhough the choices we make in life don't always necesary result in such drastic situations, they do always have consequences. Every little wrinkle we cause in the lives of one another, ripples through. Those ripples shape us into who we are.

  It took me over thirty years to realize that what I did yesterday, ultimately, leads me to another day.

  As I read these two humbling stories, I am reminded of this thought all over again.

  This concept runs deeper then my first sentence may suggest, however, and is better stated in the following:

I find myself unsure at times, though I consider myself in my wiser years; but I remember my past and all the mistakes, & achievements, which brought me to this very moment when I scribble this down for all to read.

Yesterday, I was a boy of fifteen, playing Diablo on a new computer that my mother had just bought for family use. That was the day the big wide world took a back seat and the internet, along with my imagination, became home for many years.

  Was it a mistake, discontinuing the outdoor actives which had brought me up to that moment in my life? At times I have thought it so. But with time I have found reason, like both of you, who posted before me, a single thought has made for me a life changing event.  "Everything about our own lives is tied together, becoming a constantly evolving, full circle. What once was can be again, only this time wiser."

  When we need it the most it is there to fill the void that is weighing down our minds. It is OUR past which we have moved through, & walked beyond, to travel finally to the now. What came before has built us into men and women who still have the needs of old, but due to time moving on, have found the necessary resources to live life instead of wonder, what it is to truly be "Live".

  At times I have had everything I could want, and days later I have lost everything dear to me. Rebuilding is the hardest thing any one can do, but it is often times the best course of action. Whenever disaster strikes, and brings down the world around us, we renew our foundation from the ground up, better then it ever was before. We may crack, we may crumble, but from the dust and debris we are reformed. Molded by time, painted with memories, reinforced by our past, and the lessons we had to learn to make it here.

  We matter, because without us, who will write the story? Who will edit the minds of old friends in need of gentle reassurance. Who will be there to help set the first stone of our new foundation, for the now.

Death is never easy, but it is a necessary evil, because without it we are never brought any closer to the living.

  Age is not a deciding factor when you think of death, only time is. How much time before it is your turn to go. Rather a cheerless thought, but one needed, i think, to remind us to take life a little less for granted. To carry on after our loved ones are simple memories, brought back to life by a smell, a sound, a place, or picture without words; that tells so many stories for we few who get to read its never ending pages.

  I hope these thoughts bring more happy thoughts, then sad ones. I thank those who posted before me for sharing a piece of themselves, for their inspiration, and for reminding me of where I have come from, and how strong it has made me become.

 by: - J.L.M. - (Sturger)