Brushes with death/ gratitude for life.
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,675
I grateful for every day I'm alive. It could be argued that I should be dead and maybe even deserve to be, but I find it more useful to appreciate life and be thankful for every day. Maybe others here will share their experiences and gratitude for being alive.
Life is good!
Here's my list of close calls with death or sever injury as best as I can recall:
Age 2 or 3: Fell out of the rear seat of the car onto the street near our home while Mom was making a turn. For some reason she made a right turn instead of her normal left onto adjacent street thus avoided running over me.
Age 6 or 7: The kid across the street came at me with a butcher knife. His mom saw him and stopped him. I saw him beaten with a belt in his garage across the street.
Age 9 or 10: Standing in front of the U.N. Building in NYC. Stepped off curb into street. My Pop grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me back up onto the sidewalk just in time for me to miss being run over by a speeding taxi I felt the mirror of the cab graze my shirt sleeve.
Age 12 or 13: Swimming off the Bahamas, I got a severe cramp in my leg and started to go down. My Mom swan out and dragged me back ashore.
Age 17: A sign company worker dropped large hammer from scaffolding which missed my head by inches.
Age 20 Near mid-air collision on UAL flight final approach to JFK.
Age 21: Nearly fell climbing high up on a cliff south of Carmel, CA.
Age 22: Lost with friend in deep cave in Santa Cruz mountains with flashlights going dead. Spent hours finding our way out.
Age 23: Nearly drove my motorcycle into a large, deep vertical mine shaft in the Mojave desert.
Age 24: Roofer dropped hammer from second floor missing my head by inches.
Age 24: K.N. taking us in his car sideways around blind corner at night in Los Altos Hills.
Age 24: K.N. held knife to my throat. He started to laugh and then put the knife down.
Age 24 or 25: Nearly fell off very high cliff is Yosemite.
Age 25: Nearly drove L.W.’s car off the road in the snow along a high cliff.
Age 26: A young man in job training school I worked at held a spike tapped to broom handle against my throat and said he was going to ram it through my neck.
Age 29 or 30: Landing gear failure on Eastern Airlines
flight, emergency landing in Dallas
TX.
Age 32 or 33: Three days unconscious in El Camino Hospital, Mt View due to food poisoning.
Age 34 or 35: Nearly paralyzed while inner tubing on Cache Creek. I had no feeling in my entire left leg for a couple of hours.
Age 39 or 40: Nearly drowned when caught in a sieve while canoeing on Sacramento River.
Age 42: Walking along road in Sequim, WA, a pickup truck veered toward me from behind and his rear view mirror whisked my coat sleeve.
Age 45: Near fatal overdose of alcohol and Xanax.
Age 45: Nearly drove my van off a steep cliff after being medicated and released by a clinic.
Age 47: Miss-prescribed Prozac leading to inactivity, insomnia and cessation of eating.
Age 64: Kid at gas station late at night tried “Knock Out Game” on my head.
Age mid 60’s: nearly run over by car on Main Street, Placerville, CALife is good!
Comments
-Got caught in a rip off Rottnest Island in West Australia once and thought that was the end for me.
-13 hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland on Air NZ and it bounced up and down the entire fucking flight. I thought for sure the plane was going down in flames somewhere over the remote Pacific.
-SWAT mistook me for our neighbor and held me at gunpoint (back of my head) for 5 minutes before they realized they had the wrong guy. My motherfucking douchebag drugged out asshole neighbor shows up after those 5 minutes and they quickly descended on him - grabbing him out of his car by one arm and throwing him on the ground. We were living next to the 2nd biggest drug dealer in Columbia at the time. Since then I have had a highly sensitive and irrational issue towards people who use and sell drugs.
Damn.
Vancouver 12.04.2013 | Seattle 12.06.2013 | Memphis 10.14.2014 | Quebec City 05.05.2016 | Ottawa 05.08.2016 | Toronto 05.11.2016 | Boston 08.05.2016 | Boston 08.07.2016 | Amsterdam 06.12.2018 | Boston 09.02.2018 | Boston 09.04.2018
All I did was dream about the accident over and over and over.
I have 3 that i can recall and only one was really close
1 - as an infant i almost suffered from instant crib death (not sure what they call it now) but my mom found me and she was a nurse so new what to do (smack my feet or something if i recall) and rushed me to the ER.
2 - playing in a summer hoops league when a quick moving thunderstorm moved in and as was running to my car came within about 15 feet of getting struck by lightning. lightning hit the fence that surrounded the field. it was a crazy loud sound. a guy about 5 feet in front of me got thrown to the ground by it but not hurt. it freaked me the hell out. if had been a little faster...
3 - PJ at the Borgata II show - not really sure how close really but was about 5 people from the stage on the floor at start of show. After Long Road opened 2nd song was Porch and as Porch kicked in at about the 10 second mark there was a big surge forward and was thrown forward. I had to severely grab the person's shoulders in front of me to remain on my feet. buddy of mine was taken about 10 feet forward and a girl who was standing next to us was sent forward too and came out crying a bit later. it was scary as shit for about 5 seconds. would never do GA again after that.
Glad I'm still here, though, for Twin Peaks: The Return.
Also, the trip to Italy with my wife earlier this summer was pretty great, although it just reinforced how much things suck here. Anyway, it was nice to be around for that.
Oh yeah, and my kids; my kids are awesome!
Age 22ish - Walked down hall in home, moments before brother’s shot gone blew a hole through his door–into the path of the hallway
(showing his friend his gun)
Age 40 - Not exactly close to death but had thyroid removed (I had to decide) and both lobes had cancer that were close to
breaking through... All fine 15 years later.
Where I'm not ugly and you're lookin' at me
Should I craft a weapon?
Wow, some close calls there 2-feign, tempo, pjhawks and Lizard! I'm glad you all survived!
Dan, whatever it is that almost got you, glad you made it! Between you and Jason P (and some others), we get a good measure of humor that would be sorely missed here. Keep it comin'!
Vancouver 12.04.2013 | Seattle 12.06.2013 | Memphis 10.14.2014 | Quebec City 05.05.2016 | Ottawa 05.08.2016 | Toronto 05.11.2016 | Boston 08.05.2016 | Boston 08.07.2016 | Amsterdam 06.12.2018 | Boston 09.02.2018 | Boston 09.04.2018
Though I've had some what-the-fuckity-fuck? times, I can't imagine experiencing what some of you have.
DK, glad you're here.......STILL
Brian....Daaaaaamn!!! You must have a whole army of guardian angels or something. That list is just insane!
Dan...well, you know.
Glad you're all still here with us.
I believe I mentioned a few close calls in the ghosts thread, but aside from those, the two that come to mind are...
When I was 19, we were having a pool party at the hotel where I worked at the time. I can't actually swim, but I can doggy paddle so that's what I was doing back and forth. I'd only had 1 beer so definitely wasn't drunk but for some reason I sank straight to the bottom in the deep end. Luckily one of my Marine buddies noticed me missing and dove down to get me. Other than a bloody nose, I was fine but he definitely saved me.
When I was only 4 days old, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table breastfeeding me. My parents lived with my father's parents and his mother absolutely despised my mother and the fact that she had a baby with my father. On that day, my "grandmother" grabbed a butcher knife and threw it at my mother, missing my head by only an inch. My father tackled and restrained her and she got carted off to the loony bin, straight jacket and all.
Grateful to be alive. Beyond grateful to be as blessed as I have been along the way.
My closest call came about 10 years ago or so. Was driving in the left lane of a 3 lane interstate during a light rain. Wasn't driving very fast at all for it being the interstate because of the rain. Still didn't stop me from hitting some standing water and hydroplaning out of control. I did 2 full spins across the other 2 lanes of traffic, off the road, and down the embankment into a row of thin trees (probably no more than 3 inches in diameter). The embankment being really soggy ground and those small trees stopped my truck from a much worse collision. Luckily, I only had a jammed finger and the truck only had a minor dent in the front bumper. I'm still driving that truck today and left the dent as a reminder. It took a while for me to be ok driving in the rain again, and to be honest still think about it when it is raining. I still don't know how I didn't hit another car as I lost control of the truck. Definitely thankful that I was lucky with the outcome and that it was only me involved in the accident.
Before trips we get the car checked out. A few mechanics said the car was on its last legs. My twin needed stitches in her head, and the front was totalled, but overall we were lucky.
I was born at the right time. I have the same heart defect as Jimmy Kimmel's son, and Shaun White. If I was born 10 years earlier it is not likely that I would make it to adulthood.
The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math - The Mincing Mockingbird
Unreal.
Hope those DB neighbors of yours got what was coming to them.
Glad you made it out of that shit show relatively OK.
Vancouver 12.04.2013 | Seattle 12.06.2013 | Memphis 10.14.2014 | Quebec City 05.05.2016 | Ottawa 05.08.2016 | Toronto 05.11.2016 | Boston 08.05.2016 | Boston 08.07.2016 | Amsterdam 06.12.2018 | Boston 09.02.2018 | Boston 09.04.2018
Won't attempt to summarize when EMDR is described better here. http://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
It really is meant to help with traumatic memories, not so much a generalized anxiety disorder. For non-trauma based anxiety issues, learning and practicing mindfulness to deal with the body and CBT after to learn to deal with your thinking coupled with healthy eating, exericse (yoga especially) is the solution in my biased opinion. Too many folks are self-medicating with weed, alcohol, other illegal drugs and prescription drugs. That will never, ever address the root of the issue, only cover it up a few hours at a time.
even if I look and act really crazy.
Now they selectively listen for spots to insert some CBT horseshit.
I don't know how they're selling this in MSW, PhD and PsyD programs, but it's all any younger therapist wants to do these days.
It's as if no one has time for actual long-term psychoanalysis anymore.
CBT
DBT
EMDR
I got what DB, SWAT and OK stand for.
Thanks
One thing I did realize, though, was that it actually matters who you're sitting next to when you think you're going to die, and how they deal with the situation has an impact on the moment. I was traveling with my good friend. Earlier that day, while we were killing time before our flight, we went to Madame Tussaud's wax museum (it was lame). While there, we went into the chamber of horrors or whatever - one of those haunted houses where people in costume scare you. Well, to my great surprise, my adult friend FREAKED OUT. I'm talking crying, screaming, blubbering, hyperventilating, grabbing onto strangers and just begging to get out. She was literally acting like she was going to die. I've never seen anything like it. I actually had to tell the guy with the chainsaw to back off because my friend was having a mental breakdown. It was very embarrassing. So you'd think she'd absolutely flip while we're in a plane that seems to be crashing into Manhattan, right? Nope. She sat there acting like everything was just fine, like literally as though nothing was happening. As I dealt with what I thought were the last moments of my life, I looked to her for some kind of connection or mutual understanding, and she literally just shrugged it off and said "meh."...... My reaction to this was internalized rage.