Life-Changing Moments

The title is a bit of a misnomer or incorrect phrase, I think. I mean, every moment is a life-changing one, isn't it? With every bit of passing time our lives, our memories, expand and our present moves...well, not forward, because we are always right where we are, but the past gets...bigger, I guess.

The moments I mention, though, are the BIG moments, the moments whose memories dwarf all others in scope and emotion. The death of a loved one, a decision with far-reaching repercussions, marriage, children. Those sorts of things. I have had a few of these in my life--the sad thing about them is, the biggest ones (at least for me) have been tragedies. I think it's about time for some good ones--the good ones we end to make ourselves--we choose to marry, we choose to have a child, we choose to do whatever. We never choose to have a loved one get seriously injured or die. But when that happens, nothing else seems to matter.

And when these things do happen, at least for me, I start to do a series of weird calculations and over-thinking. Regrets come to the fore, guilt, sadness...anger. For a long while recently I was very angry. I still am kind of angry, but now it's more abstract, unfocused. But it boils. and simmers. Like a geyser, maybe, building below the surface.

As much as I hate these tragic life-changers, and I want them to never happen to anyone, there's something amazing about them. You realize things, perhaps, that you never thought of before. You are forced to think things through, evaluate. You're forced to look at your life and decide what's worth it and what isn't.

I am a much more depressed person than I was six months ago. But I have a different outlook on life, not a worse or better one, just different. I am not the same person. No one could be. And I am just as lost as before. So it's hard to gauge this sort of thing. I know, for example, that I am not quite ready to leave Colorado, though I am getting there (and I think I will be going in Spring, at least). I know I am really really lucky. I know the people in my life who matter to me.