You thought it was going to wreck you for good, but it didn’t. What was it?
Maybe it was a loss. Maybe it was a failure. Maybe it was a heartbreak. Maybe it was an injury or an illness or just a piece of terrible news that you thought you’d never come back from. But you kept going, and you bounced back.
I’ve had my share. I lost my girlfriend and my job in one month once, leaving me alone and broke in a place I couldn’t afford and couldn’t afford to move out of. It was a bad time and it was hard for me, but bit by bit, things got better. I got a new job, I got a new girlfriend, and things turned around one degree at a time.
At some time in your life, you’ve done the same thing, or something like it. How did it happen for you?
Photo—ssoosay/Flickr
By the summer of 1970, I had completed Infantry OCS, jump school, some language and some Military Advisor schools. On orders. On Oct 1, 1970, my brother, Lt. James G. Aubrey USAF, was killed in a crash on Taiwan. So I got off orders and instead spent the rest of my active duty time as adjutant to an Air Defense Group. Different from Infantry service in Viet Nam. A good many other things flowed from that, including the extremely reduced chance I’d be killed, crippled, or mutilated, or would screw up and get a bunch of guys killed. OTOH, I… Read more »
In September 2010, I made a terrifying discovery – after 17 years of credit-card abuse, all of my cards were finally exhausted and I could no longer juggle them to make my minimum payments. At first, I took steps to try and deal with it. I finally broke down and admitted to my psychiatrist that I had a problem; I began attending meetings of a local chapter of Debtors Anonymous (DA); and I began to proactively contact my creditors to work things out. Alas, it was much too little and much too late, and dealing with my creditors became so… Read more »
Adrian, thanks for sharing your journey and opening up a picture of the process. I appreciate folks who can put these seasons of growth and reflection into words. It helps others greatly.
I am in the process of my bounce back. I also lost my job and my girlfriend a few months ago, completely devastated and struggling to make sense of it all. She was the World to me on so many levels and losing her was the biggest blow I had ever experienced, and I don’t say that lightly. I have spent the past six weeks trying to surface, connect the pieces, and learn from what happened when I realized that the more I struggled with the “how” and “why”, I just sank deeper in depression. It was only a few… Read more »