Life changes on a dime. Every second we breathe can lead to a new plan. "Before and After"... that is more than a title, it's a truth.
We can wake up in the morning and then in mid-afternoon, the life we knew is a history lesson.
Just one car ride, a simple left turn instead of right can all lead us to the unexpected.
And then there are the MASSIVE life changes that leave the Earth leveled.
Redditor u/Metroidude47 wanted to hear about certain life turning points that changed people by asking:
What was a moment or event that clearly divided your life into "before" and "after"?
I feel like my life changes with every strike of a minute on a clock. Of course I have had many life altering situations that turned my course in the most shocking ways. And each taught me survival at its most basic. Who can relate?
Trauma
Giphy
"Traumatic Brain Injury."
- Zeliv
"Me too! This was five years ago. There is just Before and After."
Mom
"Having to break the news to my mother that my brother passed away in an accident."
"Man... I had to tell my mom when my brother was shot and in emergency surgery. I can't imagine having to actually tell her that. Thats terrible. You did something incredibly strong though. Godspeed."
Sorry...
"First brain surgery. It lead to me losing the career I had spent years training and studying for. I had just made it to the point where I had people calling me to offer me work. (Dream come true, that.) I remember the last such phone call, "No, I cannot come work for you next month. Craniotomy. Sorry." I had just enough neural deficit that I could no longer do that type of work. I lost the replacement career I had built after the second brain surgery."
Loss...
"The death of my mom when I was 14. It's such a clear divide that it seems like that was a completely different person."
"I lost a parent at 15. It's hard to put into words how fundamentally you shift from that kind of experience. I'm fortunate to have had another before and after: when I completed my first round of EMDR."
"It sounds weird, but it felt like someone untied a knot that I had in my brain - a knot that had been there for so long that I hadn't even realized there was tension so deep inside of me. I hope healing has come your way too. 🖤".
Dry
New Beginning Sunday GIF by Chippy the Dog
Giphy
April 26, 2018. My sober life began. (I now consider that to be my birthday).
Each new day, is a new chance. Maybe we should lead with that idea. What can we learn about life before and after is more valuable that elementary education. Anyone agree?
rebuilding...
Treat Yourself GIF by blackbear
Giphy
"Definitely after losing my dad in 2016. There is a clear distinction of who I was before he died to who I am now, I had to rebuild myself because the grief absolutely destroyed me."
Same Boat
"Failing a marriage and the subsequent realisation of all my mental problems that both caused it and were heavily exacerbated by it. It's a really strange feeling of being completely alone yet at the same time being in the same boat as literally millions of people. I guess thanks for being alone with me, guys."
March 2016
"I escaped my adopters in March 2016. They were psychopaths who emotionally and mentally (and sometimes physically) abused me. The male adopter was a drunk and he would often drag me out of bed even on school nights to wrestle with me. I was adopted at 15 after going through foster care. I am 26 now and left that life behind. That was certainly the before. I am now engaged to marry my fiancé soon and living with her in a few weeks. I am doing so much better. Idk where I would be if I had stayed there."
Best Excuses For Late Assignments That Were Actually True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
1992
"At 17 when I told my social worker, I wanted to leave my "family" who did their best to impose their backward honor culture on me. I knew I would be human trafficked at 18 (arranged marriage against my will). Within 6 weeks I was in a group home and never looked back, this was in 1992."
Alive
I Love You Reaction GIF by Demic
Giphy
"My husband getting cancer and dying changed EVERYTHING. There was a before and I am living in the after."
Crap Away
"When I realized how little I meant to my "family" and decided to not accept their crappy behavior anymore."
- ibetammi
"I left 80% of my crap family behind 25 years ago. I haven't missed them, and they've gone on being crappy people without me. I haven't missed any of them."
- rushaz
Move On
"Finding out my husband cheated, finally leaving, raising two kids alone."
"It was really rough… But I did it."
Black Boy Reaction GIF
Like Barry
"Got dumped, decided to give college a try to meet women. Now it's 2 degrees and a wife later. Just to clarify people, not like I had this great ambitious plan to get educated in a hot field. I started college to meet women. If the women were in barbershop quartets, I'd have found 3 other guys and dressed like an old time barber. It's kind of like Barry when he found he liked acting. I found I was pretty good at these math, engineering and IT classes."
"My best advice is don't follow my path to success. Remember step #1 to my plan is the be deeply, madly in love and be headed to the altar for marriage after 3 years when she calls it off and you give her a few days and then go to talk to her but find her with another guy already. I'd have gladly skipped step #1 if I could have."
Charter Abuse
"Working in a charter school. I am mentally scarred from that experience. It was severely underfunded, like many charter schools. The teachers had to cover just about everything themselves. More than teachers already do. I was there just over a year and we went through 4 principals, one of which was fired for beating up one of the children. They would implement procedures and force us to use them and then would forget about them a week later."
"They treated the children like prisoners. The children were wonderful, but they needed much more help than the teachers were able to provide with the resources they had. All of my students lived in poverty and many of them had behavioral problems. I regularly had students destroying the classroom or starting fights."
"One child set another child on fire (though to be fair, it was an accident and no one got hurt. We were able to extinguish the fire before it burned more than his clothes.)n I did the best I could with what I had but by the end of it I was so burned out and exhausted that I became a shadow of myself. I was living in a fog. It took over a year for me to really be able to feel human again and another year after that for me to consistently feel happy."
- talibob
Love Story
"Marriage."
"Same here. I tried for years to "learn to love myself before I love someone else", but then I realized that is total nonsense for a person like me."
"Without a partner, I'm not complete. I don't function at full speed or ability."
"I can be okay as a single person, but I can never be great. I have good memories from before marriage, but the reason I remember them so fondly is that the rest of my life was so difficult. Now every day is a new good memory."
robert downey jr ok GIF
A few thoughts...
- My parents divorce.
- Moving the hell out of Florida for good... on my own. Twice with the second time sticking.
- My little brother's death.
"Each of those moments sticks out in my mind as different versions of myself and to look back and see the person I've become now... It's kinda mind blowing."
The Light Went Out
"The death of my best friend. I'm happy. I've got a good life. It's been long enough that I remember him with smiles and laughter rather than tears. But his absence has colored everything since. After nearly 11 years, I still see something funny and my first thought is to send it to him. I got married in 2019, and it was wonderful... but he wasn't there to be my fabulous Maid of Honor like he'd always said he would be. A light went out in my life that day that will never be rekindled."
- Lachwen
The Not Fun
Season 10 Hug GIF by Friends
Giphy
"There's 'before my mom got sick' and 'after my mom passed away.' There's also 'before I got hit by the car' and 'after I got hit by the car.' I'm fun at parties."
Life is precious. Let's just walk away with that truth, if nothing else. Who we are will always change.
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***WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SENSITIVE MATERIAL. PROCEED WITH CAUTION!***
I can't think of anything hilarious at the moment. Make us LOL.
Lady
Shocked Oh No GIF by Yêu LuGiphy"I have this friend, love him to bits, but his wife has a tendency of just constantly showing everyone pictures of their son at every social event. At the start it was understandable, but now I'm just like 'Lady, it's been two years; they're not going to find him.'"
UnoriginalUse
at 9am...
"Not the most morbid but I love Anthony Jeselnik’s story about his neighbor who has Alzheimer’s. 'One of my next door neighbors is a 90 year old man suffering from Alzheimer’s. And every single morning at 9am he knocks on my door and asks me if I have seen his wife.'"
"'Which means that every single morning at 9am I have to explain to a 90 year old man suffering from Alzheimer’s that his wife has been dead for quite some time. Now I’ve thought about moving. I have thought about just not answering my door in the morning. But to be honest, it’s worth it… just to see the smile on his face.”
dreagan021
Comedy?
"Why can't orphans play baseball? They don't know where home is."
GW2RNGR
"Why can't orphans play tennis? They get confused when they hear love."
JayDub506
People who make comedy are evil. LOL.
The Darkness
That 70S Show Reaction GIF by LaffGiphy"Dark humor is like food; not everyone gets it."
storm_the_castle
God Laughs?
"A Holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven, where she meets God. To break the tension she tells God a joke about the Holocaust, but God doesn’t laugh. The lady shrugs and says 'I guess you had to be there.'"
“'I guess you had to be there' is a common expression used when someone doesn’t laugh at a joke. It means that the comedy may not translate without the context of the situation."
"In this case the Holocaust survivor is saying it, meaning that during the Holocaust God was nowhere to be found. It’s not really a joke about the Holocaust, but the absurdity of belief in a benevolent God. Hilarious right?"
semimillennial
Oh Baby
"How many dead babies does it take to fix a light bulb? More than 3 cause my garage is still dark."
sirnibs3
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Because I don't know what it says about us as people if we laugh. Oye.
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Curious to hear from strangers online, Redditor Liam_Tang asked:
"People who've divorced, aside from adultery, what were the irreconcilable differences that ended the marriage?"
You think you know a person when you walk down the aisle.
These Redditors were in for a rude awakening.
Pet Neglect
"My wife divorced her ex for many reasons, but the final straw was when she went out of town for a few days, and when she got back he had not fed or given water to the dog. The dog lived a long and happy life after that."
– StrangeCrimes
Obsessed With A Crush
"Not me, but I had an old coworker that divorced his wife for spending their entire savings on candy crush and games of the same type."
– Hexis40
Compatibility Musts
"ITT: Intimacy (sex/romance), beliefs (religion/spirituality/politics), kids, and I haven’t seen it yet but it’s coming: finances."
"The big four. You REALLY need to discuss these things in detail BEFORE getting married."
– rabbiskittles
Physical violence is a legit reason for people to peace out of a relationship.
The Flattening
"She threatened to hit me with a hammer."
– michaelrohansmith
Hitting The Bottle
"She became an abusive alcoholic. It was sad but I had to get out."
– diegojones4
Emotional pain is too damaging to recover from.
Truth Hurts
"She told me as we stood in front of the judge ending our 7 year marriage, 'I never loved you, I just wanted kids.'"
– Pinch_Dogs
Can't Fix Angry
"She was beautiful/smart but an angry angry person. I thought I could be sweet to her and 'fix' that. Heh. She kicked the crap out of me emotionally. Wife II has been a walk in the roses for 32 years now :)"
– lowlandr
A change of heart is worthless if comes too late.
"We Could've Had A Nice Marriage
"He could not understand that my wants and needs were as important as his wants and needs. We tried to make it work for 7 years. During that time, for things that were really important to me, I tried explaining logically, asking nicely, begging, crying, yelling, passive aggressiveness... cycled back through all of these options multiple times."
"(If I knew something was important to him, I would do that. For example, he was really into sports, so I went to all his events, even though that is not at all my thing.) When I finally threw up my hands and told him it was time to get a divorce, he suddenly panicked and said 'What can I do? Do you want me to do half the chores? I'll do it! Do you want me to get a job? I'll do it! Do you want me to buy you presents for your birthday? I'll do it!'"
"So, in other words, he could have been doing that all along, but just couldn't be bothered. That made me so angry. We could have had a nice marriage that we both enjoyed, but no, by the time he saw the light, that ship had sailed."
"We are both happily remarried now (to different people) and I joke that his new wife owes me a thank you note. It was his experience with me that taught him to listen to her and take her needs seriously."
– Bluebird-True
"What Can I Do?"
"My ex was exactly like this. I didn't marry him but when I told him let's break up, he went all like, what can I do? Let's get engaged, let's look at houses, etc. Basically all the pre-marriage topics that we should be discussing about after being together for 7 years."
"I got so angry and straight up told him it's too late... I don't need you anymore."
– gudetarako
As much as a couple wants to stay together, unforeseen circumstances can eventually tear people apart.
Very few people can maintain healthy long-distance relationships.
When a new job opportunity takes a significant other away, would you begrudge them for wanting a better position to earn more money? Or is it better for them to reluctantly turn down the opportunity so they could stay with you? Do either scenarios breed resentment?
These were questions I've often asked myself with past relationships, and my answers varied depending on the person I was with.
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