Topix Questions 13 "Turning Point in Your Life" & 14 "Most Adventurous Things You've Done?"

Question 13/424:  What was a turning point in your life?

How does a person only choose one turning point to embellish?  Since I’m trying to make these posts at least one word document length I’ll probably touch on a few regardless.

If I were to go chronologically, then the first turning point would be when my sister (technically half-sister but she was always just my sister to me) came to live with us.  My sister was the product of my father’s first marriage and when they divorced my sister’s mom was pregnant without my dad knowing it.  So my sister grew up in California with her mom’s family until she was 9, at which point circumstances offered my dad the opportunity to take her in.  So with me being 3 and my brother being 8, my parents decided to have our sister who was 9 come to live with us.  It drastically changed the dynamic of our family.  I think going from 2 to 3 kids always has a drastic impact, but especially when the new kid you’re bringing home is older than the 2 that have been there since birth.  For me, the change was welcome and I couldn’t have been happier, my sister loved being a big sibling and loved spending time with me and doing whatever I wanted most of the time.  She encouraged my love of writing and encouraged me regularly, including letting me hang out in her room and write while we listened to Delilah on the radio.  She taught me about astrology and dream interpretations and introduced me to things like Stephen King and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  There are so many parts of my personality that I’m not sure would have developed if she hadn’t been brought into my world at such a young age.

Another childhood turning point in my life was when my dad quit his job of 8 years and decided to go into business for himself.  This happened shortly after his dad passed away and my parents inherited from him.  This decision totally changed the context of my childhood.  When my dad was working full-time our family did anything and everything we wanted.  I’ll admit, I was pretty spoiled during that time.  After my dad quit his job, obviously the purse strings had to get tightened, but also my parents decided to start flipping houses.  They bought their first house in 2001 and flipped it easily enough and actually got a house in addition to cash when they sold, which meant they were on to their next project house.  Shortly after that was when the housing recession of the early 2000s.  So their idea of flipping houses turned instead into renting houses out because the houses would never sell for more than they had put into them.  So we kids went from essentially doing whatever we wanted in exchange for some regular house chores, to now being asked to help on rental properties, with dad’s welding and manufacturing business, and also maintaining the hobby farm we had started.  So the second half of my childhood was a huge skill building experience in every sense of the word.  We were paid for our time, so I’m not saying this was a negative but it was a huge shift in my life experience and truly shaped who I grew up to become.

Aside from the changes that happen after high school break-ups the next momentous turning point in my life would obviously be when my dad died suddenly in 2010, only 3 months after I had graduated high school.  Once again our entire way of living was completely stopped and the family had to figure out what was going to happen next, not to mention that I had lost a parent.  When I was 17 and graduating high school, I knew exactly how my life was going to go.  I was going to graduate, start college, and start work at the law office my friend helped me get into.  I would do that for a semester or two and then I would transfer to a different campus, find a new attorney to work for, and move in with the guy I had been secretly seeing for the last few years.  I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of him (a different story for a different time) so I was complete prepared to walk away from the only life I ever knew and accept that I would probably not have a relationship with my family or any of my high school friends, and I was fine with that.  Then my dad died, and that whole plan shattered.  My mom asked me not to move out right away – she thought my intention was to move in with a high school friend, which was one of my options but not my number one choice – because she needed help figuring out what we were going to do without dad and his income.  My mom hadn’t worked a regular job since I was a toddler because my dad had always provided and then they essentially became business partners, and she wasn’t sure what she could manage on her own.  So my plan was put on pause until she got everything figured out.

The next turning point in my life happened when I met the first man I dated as an adult.  He had a young daughter who became a huge part of my life.  As a teenager I was convinced that I never wanted to have kids, and even made a deal with a high school boyfriend that as soon as we were both 18 we would both get “fixed”.  That relationship ended, however, so I never looked into the procedure and just took appropriate precautions.  When I met my first adult boyfriend and his daughter, however, things changed.  Slowly at first but then eventually I was beyond prepared to take on my role in this girl’s life in whatever capacity that meant.  I helped him advocate for more than standard bi-weekly visitation and took on being her primary caregiver during our visits when her dad worked nights or overtime.  I made sure she had wonderful birthdays and Christmases and never wanted for anything.  When my relationship started struggling and our conflicts felt insurmountable, the main reason I stayed as long as I did was for her.  Not long before I made the final decision to call things off, she asked if she could call me mom, too.  Her mom was involved in her life and this little girl clearly loved her mom, but she also loved me, too, and I didn’t want to be the source of her pain in any way.  Ultimately, after much deliberation, an attempt at couples therapy, and the advice and opinions of my friends and family, I made the extremely difficult decision to leave the relationship.  He and I agreed that for a while I would still see his daughter just on a less regular basis, to sort of ween her off of seeing me for a lack of a better phrase.  At the time I was about to turn 21 and she was about to turn 4.  Being that age is fundamental for anyone, but especially for me to choose to walk away from a little girl I loved as if she were my own.  I still state to this day that was the worst loss I’ve ever felt.  Walking back into my apartment, void of all of her belongings, threw me into a horrible depression that I unfortunately chose to cure by bringing another man into my life.  The new partner didn’t like that I wanted to keep a relationship with the little girl I had helped raise because he was my ex’s kid and therefore I was keeping a relationship with him.  So I then I had to decide if I was going to cling to a past that could be ripped away from me without any notice or focus on a future with someone I thought could be long term.  So I decided to stop seeing my ex’s daughter.  Her father was kind, however, and understood the situation and so while I couldn’t agree to take her for the day as a babysitter or anything, he would sometimes pay me a visit with her in tow to my work on days he knew my job was slow so I could at least see her and talk to her and see how much she had grown.  I still wonder if I made the right decision to stop seeing her on a regular basis, even if it was as a free babysitter.  That situation completely changed me as a person, she taught me how to be gentle and patient.  She helped me grow up, and I still love her and miss her dearly.

The final turning point in my life would be my narcissistic ex who completely required my brain, as narcissists are capable of doing.  I’m still trying to undo the damage that happened during that relationship as it continues to negatively impact my current relationships with those around me.  Not really sure what more to say about that without getting into the nitty gritty details which definitely seems like a different story for a different day.

I think, to date, those are the turning points of my life.  I’m sure I’ll continue to having more because that’s what life is.  But I always think that these stories are the most interesting part of people’s lives.

 

Question 14/424:  What are the most adventurous things you’ve done?

As a rule, I don’t consider myself an adventurous person.  I’ve had people in my life tell me that a lot of the things I do are things they would never be comfortable with.  These things are usually related to social situations.  I know that some people consider it rude, but generally I don’t mind inviting myself places or along with people and I don’t mind being a third wheel.  Because of this, I often find myself in new unique situations that a lot of people wouldn’t.  I’ve always been a social person, and I have always been the type to go along with a friend or a partner if they’re going to see people.  Then, after my first adult breakup I decided to enter into a “Yes Man” phase where I wouldn’t say no to any safe and reasonable suggestion.  By doing this, I met one of my dearest friends at her Mad Tea Party themed birthday, at the time I had no idea how fundamental she would become in my life.  Then after meeting in a group setting, she offered to go with me to see The Wizard of Oz remastered in theater, and I decided to go with her despite being a near stranger.  From that day forward her presence in my life was cemented.  I’ve been to various board game nights, live action role playing events, theater shows and concerts that I may not necessarily have though were my preferred activities but if the opportunity to go presented itself, I went ahead and did it.

I also feel like taking on a legal secretary job at 17 and freshly graduated from high school was pretty adventurous at the time.  I was terrified of messing up or seeming inept and so I did everything in my power to ensure I was doing the job to the best of my ability, despite having minimal training and zero experience in the field, and it has wound up being my career for the past 12, almost 13, years.  I have also over the years reached out to fellow attorneys and offered to help them on a part-time basis even if I didn’t necessarily have the skills they would require out of a full-time hire which has allowed me the opportunity to experience more than just one type of law.

I haven’t travelled much in my adult life, but I will say that any travel I have done has been on a pretty spontaneous basis.  In the summer of 2021 a couple of friends and I decided on about a month’s notice to go to Chicago for the weekend.  I’ve also done similar trips to Ohio and more recently a trip to Indiana for the sole purpose of seeing a production of The Book of Mormon.  I want to make travel a bigger part of my life and experience, and part of me thinks that one of my major roadblocks is the planning part.  I feel like when I sit down to plan a trip, I get overwhelmed with the variables.  Whereas if I just decide I want to go, and I have a few back up credit cards in case of emergency, I’m better off just getting on the road – or on the plane, though I’ve never flown before – and just making it work.  Planning ahead seems to just encourage my anxiety to grow and ultimately stops me from taking the chance on the experience.

Honestly, I think that’s the key to any adventurous trait I may have, when I don’t let my brain and anxiety get in the way.  I also try to remind myself that most of the time the worst thing that can happen is really not that terrible most of the time.  If you ask to tag along to a party or invite yourself over, the worst someone can say is no.  If you decide to go on a spontaneous trip, the worst that can happen is that you get stranded.  But even in those scenarios, you’ll come out the other side relatively unscathed.  Of course there are always catastrophic situations that people cannot foresee, but that’s exactly the point.  You can either choose to live in fear of all the things that could happen despite the chances being slim to none, you can choose to do what you want and just know that you’ll be able to get out of any scrape you may find yourself in.  I still believe in taking calculated risks, and being as safe and responsible as necessary but it’s important not to let those things stop you from doing the things that bring you joy and make you feel fulfilled.  Life is far too short not to.