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InkTober: Day 31 – Friend

“Show me your friends, and I’ll show you who you are.” – Unknown

I heard that phrase a lot while I was growing up. My paternal grandmother was an especially strong believer in that theory. She was often right about which of the kids we brought home to hang out would be the one to try to tempt us into trouble or be less observant when it came to following rules. As I got older, even when I professed to be my own person and an independent thinker who could choose my own friends, those words often floated up into my thoughts at times when I questioned whether I should keep someone in my life after witnessing troubling behaviours and attitudes. It became one of the many thought-provoking phrases to help me figure out what to do.

However, I haven’t always gotten it right. There were times when I suppressed that wisdom and let others convince me to act against my feelings. When I do that, I tend to find myself in situations that are less than desirable or outright harmful to me. Situations that range from being pushed to socialize with people who are so negative that talking to them is a physically draining experience; being at events with people whose favourite pastime is talking trash about whoever might be absent, while recognizing if I was absent I could be the topic of cruel conversation. I’ve even had to aggressively confront people who are so bigoted and intolerant that they comfortably verbalize negative stereotypes and make stomach turning generalizations about anyone not like them.

The most extreme situation I faced in recent years, involved a decade-long friendship. With this friend, I could no longer deny that he had a substance abuse problem and he wasn’t just a hard partyer. He came to my home to visit me shortly after I became ill to ask for some of my pain medications so he could get high. That situation did place me in direct harm and I got there because over the length of our friendship I repeatedly downplayed how incompatible the habits and vices of this person were with mine; and I wanted to believe that as long as he didn’t impose that part of his lifestyle on me we could continue being friends.

Unfortunately, I needed a jolt this shocking to remind me that it’s not realistic to have people whose views about the world are so drastically different from your own so involved in your life. I don’t mean that my friends always have to agree with me, but it’s hard to maintain a harmonious balance when you don’t share similar core values. Overall, I consider myself very fortunate, because when I think about my closest friends, I can see that I’ve chosen some incredible people to be in my life. The people in my life who are closest to me are loyal and trustworthy. They are supportive and tell me the truth instead of telling me what they think I want to hear, and we never have to hide our true feelings about anything from each other. They have empathy for others and always treat everyone with respect. Most importantly, we have meaningful connections, which I never worry might negatively affect my life

InkTober - Day 31 - Friend

 

InkTober: Day 30 – Wreck

I try not to think about this too often, but many years ago, I was in a car accident that wrecked the front passenger side of my car and caused serious injury to my right shoulder. The force of the impact briefly disoriented me and it took a couple of minutes for me to recover my bearings. When my head cleared, I realized that my car had been hit and I was stopped in the middle of a busy street. There were many witnesses to the accident. A number of people came to my aid and someone called 911 for emergency assistance.

Within a few minutes, the police and ambulance arrived. The paramedics checked me and the other driver for injuries, while the police assessed the accident scene. It was clear that the driver of the other car was at fault for the collision of our vehicles. He had driven in the wrong direction down a one-way street before attempting to make an illegal turn. When he pulled out into the street to turn, he drove right into the front passenger side of my car. My car couldn’t be driven because the front wheel was bent. A tow truck towed it to my dealership for repairs.

The driver of the other car was a teenager who shouldn’t have been driving alone after dark. The car belonged to his parents and he wasn’t insured to drive it. At the scene of the accident, the police laid multiple charges and fines against him. One of the fines was an immediate $5,000.00 because he was an uninsured driver. I know that the other fines and charges were also significant and I could see the fear growing in him as the police spoke to him while they waited for his parents to arrive at the scene.

Looking back at that night, it’s incredible that neither of us had injuries that were more critical. The more incredible thing – and the reason I try not to think about that accident – is that I saw the accident before it happened. I know what that sounds like but it’s true. I saw the accident unfold in slow motion before I felt the collision of the two cars. I still don’t know how to explain it because I clearly couldn’t change what I foresaw. I couldn’t steer myself out of the path of the other car. I couldn’t slam on my brakes and halt my forward movement. I couldn’t do anything to stop what I could see about to happen. How do I explain that?

Not being able to explain what I saw may have influenced some of the decisions I made later. I never spoke to that boy or his parents again after that night. I took the information I needed from the police for my insurance company and left the accident scene with my friend who came to pick me up. When I spoke to a representative from my insurance company the next morning and she asked if I wanted to sue the family for more damages beyond what my insurance would cover – all repairs to my car, all medical expenses, any lost wages –, I said no. I didn’t even need to think about it.

What I did think about was that I somehow knew the accident was going to happen before it did but I couldn’t stop it from happening. Maybe my car was the car that boy was supposed to hit that night. Maybe there was a reason why neither one of us wasn’t more seriously injured. Maybe there was a reason the accident happened just a few blocks away from my home before I got to the fast speeds of the highway. I don’t know. What I do know is the soreness in my shoulder was increasing, but all I kept thinking about was the look of fear on that boys face; and I felt that taking more money from him and his family on top the thousands they had to pay in fines wasn’t going to benefit me, or anyone else.

Looking back at that night now, maybe that accident happened to test us both. Was I not grateful enough for my life and all I had? Was I not patient enough? Did I need to give up trying to control what happened around me? Was I unable to live in the moment instead of always looking forward for what was to come next or looking back and reliving all that had already happened? What was that boy supposed to learn? Did either of us learn what we needed from that accident; or are we both still thinking about that night and wondering why it happened?

InkTober - Day 30 - Wreck

 

InkTober: Day 29 – Surprise

I love doing things to surprise the people in my life that I care for. I don’t feel it’s necessary to wait for a special occasion like a birthday or holiday to do something nice for them. However, I don’t like being surprised. I especially dislike someone telling me they have a surprise for me because the suspense of waiting feels terrible. It’s hard to quiet my mind as it jumps from one possibility to the next trying to figure out what the surprise might be. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I don’t like having someone do nice things for me.

I think not liking being on the receiving end of a surprise has a lot to do with always trying “to be in control” of all aspects of my life. The crazy thing about that is if you understand anything about life, you know you can’t control anything about it. Time passes, the seasons change, and we grow older. We can’t stop any of it and we can’t speed it up or slow it down. All we can do is manage how we react to each unexpected event, and even those we know are about to unfold.

I say manage because I’ve learned – it seems like a lot more since becoming ill – that sometimes our emotions surprisingly overwhelm us. This means our reaction to a situation may not match the scale of what has happened. We also need to take into account that our reactions are also coloured by our past experiences so what we feel in a given moment may not even be about what’s happening in that moment. A current event could reawaken a memory or long-forgotten feelings and it’s not until we stop and put things in perspective that we might figure this out and make sense of our surprising reaction(s).

So, knowing all of this, how can anyone expect to control anything?

InkTober - Day 29 - Surprise