Was there something in your life that might have changed who you are today

Sassycakes

Sassycakes

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My older cousin called me today and we were reminiscing about the past. She remembered when my Mother gave birth to me . She said my Mom had a hard time during the pregnancy because in her 3rd month She lost my twin. She worried that I wouldn't survive. I did and I was born full-term and weighed over 7lbs. After the conversation, I started thinking I wonder how different my life would have been if my twin had survived.
 

šŸ˜² Well, I know I should have been born into a rich, elite family. But for some reason, the stork dropped me off at the wrong house, and I grew up working every day of my life.....

My life changed the day I realized that only I was responsible for what was happening in my life. It was a day when I knew that everyone was created equal, but not everyone continued to live a life that was equal.
 
Not to sound as though I'm dissing my marriage, but I have wondered over the years how life may have turned out for me had I not tied myself down to marriage and children.

Would I have become a career woman, would I have travelled the world, would I have been happier being single and carefree, would I have settled down somewhere else in the world outside of my own birth country.

There's no doubt that my life would have been much different had I not ventured down the path that I did, but how much more different I will never know.
 
I was hell-bent-for-leather to marry my high school sweetheart at 18 (he was 20). Nobody was going to talk me out of it.

Three weeks before our wedding, he tried to get me to elope. I refused, wanting the big church wedding we had planned. Then it turned out that he had gotten another girl pregnant. Being the innocent little church girl I was, I had been holding out for the ring on my finger and he had sown his wild oats elsewhere.

Both of them did me a HUGE favor. The marriage wouldn't have worked out. I did much better in the marriage game three years later. Immensely better.
 
Sassycakes said:
My older cousin called me today and we were reminiscing about the past. She remembered when my Mother gave birth to me . She said my Mom had a hard time during the pregnancy because in her 3rd month She lost my twin. She worried that I wouldn't survive. I did and I was born full-term and weighed over 7lbs. After the conversation, I started thinking I wonder how different my life would have been if my twin had survived.
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Maybe you wouldn't be here (?)

Reminds me of what my dad told me when I was around 10 or so;

'You know, your mom had two miscarriages before you were born.
If they would have lived, you wouldn't be here'

I had to think about that for awhile
 
jujube said:
I was hell-bent-for-leather to marry my high school sweetheart at 18 (he was 20). Nobody was going to talk me out of it.

Three weeks before our wedding, he tried to get me to elope. I refused, wanting the big church wedding we had planned. Then it turned out that he had gotten another girl pregnant. Being the innocent little church girl I was, I had been holding out for the ring on my finger and he had sown his wild oats elsewhere.

Both of them did me a HUGE favor. The marriage wouldn't have worked out. I did much better in the marriage game three years later. Immensely better.
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This one's for you, Ju! :)

 
If my parents hadn't moved from NY to FL in 1962, my brother and I would have grown up closer to my relatives as we became teens. My grandmother was a big influence in my life until we moved when I was almost 10. I ended up being a teenage mother at 16. My parents both had to work and my brother and I were left to do what we did pretty much on our own. In NY my parents owned a gas station which was right across the road from our house so supervision was close. I love my son but not having him so young would have been better for him too.
 
Anything that might have happed differently in my life would have produced altering results to my present life. I wonder what my life might have been if had recovered from mental illness sooner and had more time to enjoy my new found abilities.
 
Gary O' said:
Maybe you wouldn't be here (?)

Reminds me of what my dad told me when I was around 10 or so;

'You know, your mom had two miscarriages before you were born.
If they would have lived, you wouldn't be here'

I had to think about that for awhile
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You're right Gary. The only real affect it had on me was that my Mother never really cared for me as much as she did for my older brother and older sister . For some reason she never bonded with me in the same way.
 
Sassycakes said:
The only real affect it had on me was that my Mother never really cared for me as much as she did for my older brother and older sister . For some reason she never bonded with me in the same way.
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Ho Lee Crap! Same here!
Later, in teen life, I felt pretty lucky about all that
No strings

On the other hand, my little fat brother got all the attention
It turned him into a mental handicap
Until she died
 
:unsure: My life was changed forever by a boy I dated when I was 18. He adored me, for a few weeks, then ghosted. I was devastated. Don't ask me why but I let this one bad relationship completely alter the course of my life for a few years. He's still alone and unmarried so maybe that says something about his personality. But I do wonder if I might have done better had I never met him. And, I actuality wish I hadn't to this day.
 
At first, I thought, "Oh, damn right, YES". But then I began to think about it. I didn't have this grand plan to rule the world, stuff just kind of happened. Yet, I'm who I am, so whatever could have happened, wouldn't have changed me. What I mean is that there were no great earth shattering moments in my life, which would have altered my thinking, etc. I guess that sounds boring. While I can think of moments that are memorable, things would have probably come out the same way, eventually.
I have to go, I have some boring stuff to do.
 
If I had gotten treatment for the panic attack I had a few months before marrying my first wife I'm willing to bet that I wouldn't have married her and my life would have been very different. I'm fairly sure it was my subconscious telling me something my conscious self didn't want to acknowledge or accept.
 
There have been many 'roads not taken' in my life - some seemingly simple decisions that appeared inconsequent at the time - that had major influence on later life.

There were some bad decisions but I prefer to think of them as learning experiences (although sometimes it took making the same one several times to actually learn from it).
 
Yes, I often wonder how things would have turned out if I had stayed with my first husband. We married young and I was stupid, so looking back makes me a little wistful because I should have tried harder. Of course I later I remarried and life happened, so I suppose things are as they should be.
 
Yes loads of things in my life , if they had occured differently would have changed my life in some way..whether for the better who knows.

Like you sassy, I was a twin, my brother and i both born 2 months premature, both stillborn, me at a tiny 2lbs 2 oz... they could only revive one child.. and I've since learned that back in the mid 50's reviving even one premature twin was hailed as extraordinary . I don't really wonder how we'd have been if he'd lived tbh because I had a brother born just 14 month after me, and we went everywhere together right up until we were adults, and everyone thought we were twins anyway, when were children, so I didn't feel I'd missed out on anything ..

However like others, lots of things changed the course of my life, and many I wish had happened very differently
 
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hollydolly said:
Yes loads of things in my life , if they had occured differently would have changed my life in some way..whether for the better who knows.

Like you sassy, I was a twin, my brother and i both born 2 month premature, both stillborn, me at a tiny 2lbs 2 oz... they could only revive one child.. and I've since learned that back in the mid 50's reviving even one premature twin was hailed as extraordinary . I don't really wonder how we'd have been if he'd lived tbh because I had a brother born just 14 month after me, and we went everywhere together right up until we were adults, and everyone thought we were twins anyway, when were children, so I didn't feel I'd missed out on anything ..

However like others, lots of things changed the course of my life, and many I wish had happened very differently
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Because my Mother lost my twin so very early in the pregnancy they never knew if it was a boy or a girl. Because of all of the family my Mother came from of 11 children, the 6 girls had brown eyes and the 5 boys had blue eyes. Because I was the only granddaughter out of over 50 first cousins I was the only girl with blue eyes,so my Mom always felt the twin she lost was a boy.
 
My life changed when I met and married @Kayelle. she taught me to be more conscious of others. Also when we traveled, to be aware of the people that had lived there in the past instead of just the buildings.
 
My life changed when I was less than 3 1/2. My Mother died and that made an abrupt change in my life. Over the years I have thought about what might have been different and how I might have been different. I wondered what it might be like to have siblings or have grown up in a more normal environment , but the oddest thing happened one time.

I was in my late '30's and was at a restaurant with my wife. We were having lunch. I heard this woman's voice floating over the crowd. It wasn't particularly loud, or shrill, but it carried over the din of the room. I looked over at this woman and was completely taken back by the immediate thought that came out of nowhere. If my Mother had lived, that's the woman I'd have married. I don't believe I'd ever seen this woman before and I certainly didn't have thoughts like that. Odd. Quite a puzzlement.
 
Oh, many things! If only this, or if only that.
Had I not done this, or not done that.
Things would have been so different, but in what way? I've no idea. Would my parents, had they lived, remained as happy together as they were before?

Really I have no idea how my life would have been without certain actions. I might have even been worse off, who knows? Maybe what caused so much acute and long lasting grief saved me in ways I can't begin to imagine.

Had I valued my curiosity above my resentment of a structured environment called "school", who knows what I might have achieved or discoveries enjoyed early on? So foolish I was.

After so many painful years after my divorce, I've almost come to the conclusion that it very well might have ended up worse.

This is a truly profound question. Really thought provoking. But life is always changing.
 
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At age five years old I discovered my mother out on a ledge nine stories above the sidewalk. When she saw me looking out at her she tumbled back into the hotel suite instead of out into the long drop. She swore me to secrecy and I kept it to myself for fifty years.
I was her care giver in multiple ways for the rest of her bi polar life, except for twelve hedonistic years between leaving for college and my turning thirty.
Then she had a serious heart attack and I was her nurse again.
Dad's been gone for nineteen years and she's been in the ground for two years.
Now I'm sixty seven years old and seeking to define my identity.
I don't really like what my life has been, I blame myself for my own decisions, I wish I hadn't drank and smoked and screwed around pointlessly in college and afterwards....
My journey isn't over yet but I wish there was more gladness in it.
 

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