What experience most defined who you are today?

Let's see...

I have a bunch of events in my life so far that have highly affected who I am now. It's hard for me to outright define just one, but I'd say it's the combination of two separate events that made me turn far left: The death of my father, and when my mother had her stroke.

My father had passed away when I was around 7ish years old because his boat had capsized out at sea. Him and five others ended up dying that day, and his body was never recovered. As a result of that incident, my mother filed a wrongful death suit against the fishing company he worked under, because as it turns out there were some fatal flaws in how the boat was designed that caused it to flip over. That event set the stage for the rest of my life, because the money from that incident was the only way I was able to go through college due to my parents generally not earning much from their careers.

It took me a long time to rationalize it and get over the incident. In part because he also physically abused my mother and struggled with drug abuse. That experience ended up evolving into me becoming a staunch feminist later in life and why I view people that treat women with disrespect as absolutely abhorrent.

The second is when my mother suffered a stroke in her late 30s. She had fallen down some stairs and managed to hit her carotid artery. To this day, we'll never know where she fell down the stairs because she had her stroke, or if falling down the stairs and hitting her neck is what triggered it. Regardless, she was extremely lucky to survive, but she suffered some brain damage. Her left side of her body is semi-paralyzed and she's struggled a lot with depression and bipolar disorder. She also struggles a lot with learning new tasks and can get easily frustrated. Thankfully she's gotten better over the decades since, with medication helping smooth out many of the problems and the persistent pain.

The stroke isn't what affected me so much though, it was how she was treated. This was in the early-2000s and while she had healthcare, it denied her treatment every step of the way. Insurance companies treated her stroke as a pre-existing condition, generally did everything they could to prevent helping her and bankrupted what remained of my family's finances. She spent multiple years during my highschool life confined to her bed, because she was in such pain that she could barely function. She expressed multiple times to me how badly she wished she could just end it all and needless to say, that sort of thing fucks with you on a deeper level.

From there, that's where I realized how deeply broken our healthcare system is. The reason why I often share these deeply personal stories is that I think people can have trouble understanding what it's like to see and experience some of the worst things America has to offer for people that grow up poor. I've been very lucky to have escaped poverty, and so I've always viewed it as part of my goal to show people why so many of these systems we have in place are broken. In that sense at least, I can look back at my terrible childhood and use that perspective to hopefully improve things for others.

Coincidentally, I happen to be very into video games as my coping strategy. Go figure.

I was diagnosed with a rare disease in my early 20s. By the time I found out what it was, the damage was done. My body was completely destroyed, everything atrophied, and my mind was nearly gone. It’s hard to put into words just how fucking miserable and defeated I felt. I had gone from being in superior physical shape to barely being able to get out of bed, in less than 9 months.

I had taken so much for granted. And I’ve seen so many good people die who were my age or younger. For a while I kind of had this survivors guilt.

Who I am today is someone who tries to do my best with the second chance I was given. And I always think about the people before me who have died young and never had a chance to even live or do things like “normal people”. Having your health taken away is a proper way to see what you are made of. I found out that i was much stronger than I ever thought I could be (and how weak I really was before this event) and I am using what I’ve learned to help others in the mental health field.

I have two distinct memories of things that might qualify for what you're looking for.

The first....I'm not sure how old I was.....4, maybe 5. I was living with my mom and maybe my dad. I don't remember if they were divorced or not although I only remember my mom being present for this particular episode. We were going somewhere....maybe church or something because I remember her wanting me to put on something nice. I don't remember much except going to her to ask her something about my clothing....I think it was about my belt because it set her off and she proceeded to beat the ever loving shit out of me with it. I remember dropping to the ground, crying, and she proceeded to continue to hit me with the belt and started kicking me as well. Took at least a couple of shots to the chest. She then yanked me up by arm and told me to get dressed.

My mother had always had a temper. A by product of a troubled childhood, marrying young, having children young, divorcing young, and trying to raise and support those kids young. But this was a first for me. The first time I no longer saw my mother as a loving, caring woman but someone I feared. I can't really pinpoint HOW it might've changed me considering my age but an experience like that doesn't go by without repercussion to the psyche, especially for someone that young. I've always been far more eager, often to my detriment, to please than most people I know and I wonder if this was the trigger point for it. When my mother gave my 17 year old sister a black eye(this was a few years back and 25 years after my little incident), it took everything I had not to go nuclear on her. I don't think she remembers it happened but I had long since forgiven her for it. But it was once again clear to me that my mother has anger issues that, when it reaches a boiling point, she resorts to physical violence rather than removing herself like an adult should.

My second memory was a few years later. By this point, I was living with my dad. I was....11....I think and in the 4th grade. To some extent, this is the time that boys and girls start noticing each other and start "dating"....I knew of a girl who liked me and I liked her. She was sweet, kind, and we were kindred spirits being the de facto nerds and outcasts of our grade. Me....being a dweeb....wrote her a note that was all Star Wars'd up.....which she proceeded to show her best friend.....who proceeded to show everyone in our grade....who proceeded to surround me, laugh at me, and make fun of me until I broke down in tears at the school playground.

THAT one I know how it affected me. I shut down completely. I didn't talk or socialize with any of them. I didn't blame the girl. It wasn't exactly a surprise that she'd show her best friend the boy she liked liked her back. But getting humiliated like that in front of all of them? I wanted nothing to do with them. I didn't tell my dad. He wouldn't have cared, tbh. This was a man that took pride in sitting his sons down and making them watch Full Metal Jacket. He was, and still is really, the very definition of toxic masculinity.

It would be sixth grade, my final year in that school and with those kids, that I felt like I could be friends with them again. But the experience had changed me. I moved to a different school following that year and my withdrawn nature had become my normal. I didn't socialize much. Had few friends. Dealt with minor bullying that I never reported. I buried myself in Star Wars, Animorphs, and video games. I played baseball and it was the only place I felt I wasn't judged. No one cared who I was as long as I was playing well.

Sports would become my savior....or my curse, depending on how you looked at it.

Watching this short film: https://vimeo.com/223044638

It made me finally acknowledge that I'm trans after years of questioning, of going back and forth between denial and half-way accepting it.