Meeting my current girlfriend has actually had a major impact on my life. Our two households are completely different; Mine seems to be a little more quiet and 'nice' while her's is loud and 'rude'. I use these two words cautiously though because my house does contain some yelling and such sometimes, where as hers is more quiet sometimes (but her family is pretty loud)

To cut down on a very long story, lets just say she hates living there and runs into many problems while living there... And I found out why.

Her parents smoke, drink, everything- and her moms cousin (who lives there, her father lives wayyyyy elsewhere) is pretty mean. I went over to their house one day, he was drunk, and was screaming at the top of his lungs at both my girlfriend and her mother.. It was pretty scary.. So she left to go out and hangout with me and such, and he decided that when we left he would throw a beer bottle at us (pretty damn classy). Luckily the beer bottle missed us, but something ticked me off.. I turned around, walked back inside and hit him in the face.. (classier). I was scared to death after this, I thought he would hate me and all this (possibly sue? Idk)

Turns out he wouldn't do anything because he beat my girlfriends mom.



Long story short, I found out I might have a very small temper, I might be protective, or I might just have found out I had more balls than I realized..

Going to a middle school in a different area where I didn't know anyone. Didn't have any friends at all for the first few months, which really affected my confidence, something I still have trouble with. So yeah, thanks parents.

At fourteen my dad decided he didn't want to live in a normal neighborhood in a normal town anymore and moved us to the Sierra Nevada out in the middle of nowhere. We were seven miles from the town where my new, much smaller high school was and almost everyone in that county is old and retired - the nearest kid my age was a mile away (and I didn't like him). It was so incredibly boring living on the side of a mountain in the middle of a pine forest. I was very isolated and took to reading, music and TV to pass the time (since I had no social life away from classes). Made me quite introverted at a point in my life when I should have been out running around with friends. After I graduated I tried to commute to the nearest community college, which was 50 miles away. All it did was destroy my car and still left me no time for a social life (when the two hours on the road each day). After I finished that I went to work in Yosemite National Park since the nearest four year university was two hours away (and dad didn't want to spend money on keeping me up in Fresno while I went). I didn't finish college until about five years later when I had enough money to do it on my own.

What galls me is that our old town had both types of higher education no more than 30 minutes away and was serviced by bus. I loved my dad, but in his selfishness he made my teen and young advlt years very difficult and I live with the repercussions to this day.

Most recently, taking up a new hobby at the start of this year. Before that I'd turned into a bit of a hermit, quite lazy, and I didn't have many friends. Throughout my teens I was never single for very long, and it was a bit of a shock for myself to realise I hadn't had a relationship since the breakup with my ex over a year ago. I was coasting, and at new year I decided enough was enough.

I've made a few more friends through my new hobby, which also keeps me fit, and gets me out of the house once or twice a week. I might even get a new relationship out of it, since I've expanded my network of people. I can still be a bit of a hermit, but I don't feel so bad about it anymore.

Once when I had to go to church in middle school I all of a sudden started believing in God, which was a turning point.

Also recently, I was cut from my school's baseball team. It made me really down on myself and I have had to deal with feelings of inferiority which I am still not totally over.

I wouldn't say there was one particular event but the past few years since I graduated high school have affected me greatly.

The summer after graduation was one of the best times of my life. A rather large group of people from my class,about 20 or so, all became good friends and spent the majority of those two months with each other. I became a little more outgoing because of it but since that summer the group has splintered and drifted more and more each year. Then with the start of college came what has easily been the worst moment of my life when one of my best friends since Jr. High died in a car accident. I didn't go into an unhealthy depression but it straightened out my priorities a bit. Not that I wasn't a nice person before but after that I began to put my friends before anything. People really put too much value into work or school and I began to realize my friends were the most important thing in the world to me. I've also figured out what I want to do as far as a career goes. Some of you may know that I'm working towards being a gaming journalist. I've never worked for something so hard in my entire life. I've also been dealing with my moms struggle with depression. Like many others she lost her job of 25 years because of [censored] reasons. I ended up driving her to the hospital one day because she was having such a hard time and even contemplated suicide. She ended up spending a week in a special hospital for people suffering with depression. Since then she has been mostly fine with the occasional bad day. While that group of friends I talked about earlier has gone their separate ways and continues to do so there is still a small handful of us that are really close. Occasionally we see the others at parties or when they come back form college but most of them stick to their own groups.

To sum things up the last few years I been just simply trying to enjoy life to the fullest while chasing my career goals.

I've had a lot of life lessons I can think of that changed me, these are just a few.

When I was 10 I got really into graffiti thanks to my easily influenced mind and a game called Getting Up. I eventually got caught by my parents after they found my spray cans. I was absolutely mortified/humiliated/shamed/terrified. It did not effect me right away, I loved it so much that I kept doing it for a little while, but then I stopped and now I look back at it as one of the worst things I have ever done. It has made me truly hate it when people do stupid things like what I did.

When I was 11 I poked a pen into everyone's bicycle tires at school. Don't know why I did it. I got caught somehow and I had to patch everyone's tires. It made me respect people's property more.

When I was 14 I wiped out on my longboard and scraqed my elbow up pretty badly, much worse than anything that had happened before. It happened when I was going really fast and I could not stop. I am much more careful now and find it hard to go fast without freaking out.

Last year I started drinking with my friends during the summer. We did it every few weeks, and we would always try to get drunker every time, when we didn't we felt we had wasted it. We never really got drunk until the last time. I drank a 2L of Growers peach along with my friend who had his own. We felt awesome for most of the night, but by the end we were throwing up really badly. I remember my friend puking in the washroom, getting it all over the floor. I then went in there and sat on the toilet asleep for two hours, my feet in his puke. Most people say that when something like this happens to them that they tell themselves they will never do it again. Well, I told myself that too. Eventually, though, I wanted to drink again with my friends. Low and behold, my bad experiance has left my brain with a connection telling me that I can NOT HAVE ALCOHOL. EVER. EVER. (pretty much ) So now when I even get a whiff beer I gag. Even a little bit of alcoholic Grenadine in my coke makes it undrinkable. It really svcks. If anyone knows how to cure this then please speak up.

Recently I have noticed that my dad is amazingly happy. He never gets mad. Hes not always cheerful but he knows how to deal with all situations so that they don't make him upset. If everyone was like him then we would not have a lot of problems in the world. That made me try to emulate him a lot.

I guess you can say I have two experiences that have shaped me as a person more than any other.

The first one was when I was about 6 or 7. My parents got divorced and me and my brother stayed with our mom. She had a low income and low self esteem after what had happened. I became an angry unstable child, prone to ragefits and had trouble concentrating on anything. This lasted until I was about 11.
My mother was introduced to my current stephfather, a nice(if a bit stern) man. He took me and my brother under his wings as if we were his own. He thought me selfcontrol and too look at the bad things that happen to you with perspective. The first time we knew him I can't say I treated him the way he deserved, I was still most unstable. He changed that however, and before long he had changed my whole being. I was no longer prone to rage or sudden emotional changes, and I started to look more positive on the future. Since then I have learned that one should never loose self-control, never let others opinions bother you, never fake who you are and never let others change you.

He have been a better father than mine ever was, and I owe everything positive thing in my life to him.

As someone who's had real problems with alcohol and drugs (clean and sober for nearly six years now), I can honestly say that you are better off without it. With the type of drinking you've described, it sounds as though it could have serious repercussions for all involved.

I can only think of two major things that changed my veiw on the world.
Firstly, when my Grandmother died last May from lung cancer, my whole family was completely torn, yet we stuck by eachother. One thing she told me weeks before her death was to never give up on anything you believe in because you never know how long you have.
Another event was about 2 years ago, when my Grandfather was diagnosed with Parkinson's. This really shook our family, because my Grandad was always a very active and flamboyant person. He has changed so much, he can hardly eat and needs help after walking for periods of time, yet his spirit is nowhere near broken. He still does incredibly stupid things for the sake of it, breaks the rules and isnt afraid of having fun, even at 70. He is my hero. Even with the great restrictions of Parkinson's and pain of my Grandmother's death after 50 years of marriage, my Grandad still knows how to look on the bright side of life.

Running qbasic.exe
Reading Hobbit
Playing Morrowind

I've certainly learned my lesson on the drinking for drunkness, that was foolish. I'm upset because a portion of my culture has been taken away from me, and I can't seem to get it back. I want to be ale to enjoy a glass of champagne with my family when we are all advlts, and I want to be able to have a beer with the buds and watch the game.

Thanks for the advice, though. And congratulations.

immigrating from london to auckland, NZ when i was 14

Another thing that inspired me to become a better person was my brothers incarceration, he's in prison for 30 years. So I'm my mothers only remaining son, so I want to be something, to make my mom proud.

Jesus Christ.

I don't know, I guess when I split my head open did something to me because my marks shot way up and I was achieveing quite a lot for maths and English tests - but that died dwon when I moved to Secondary school.

I guess one knockback this one time made me stop and think about trying for a relationship with friends since it can have such crappy affects before it starts or when it ends. I guess it shaped me in a way I've been more hesitant when asking girls to do stuff, hasn't really affect my ability to form friendships though.

The Korean War. It was, without a doubt, the defining moment of my life in so many ways.

The death of my Grandfather.

It was my Red Pill.

I used to be very sad. I was sad all the time. I was sad because of friends, which I didn't have. I was sad because of a girl, who loved someone else.

Then one day I stumbled upon a http://www.hongfire.com/cg/data/25/caramelldansen.swf. In a flash my mind was set on fire and the chemical and neurological structure of that organ was forever changed. After that day I realized that I didn't need those friends who I didn't have, nor those women who loved someone else, in order to be happy. Infact, I wagered, if so much of my sadness was because I lacked friends I ought to just get rid of the whole shebang and be done with it.

So I did.

I removed the need for interpersonal relaitionships of any kind. Just like that I wasn't sad anymore. Infact I was happier than I had ever been in my life. I based my life's philosophy on the complete lack of interpersonal relationships. That was over 6 years ago.

So I'm a bit of a bastard, and quite the hermit. Lots of people take offence to my misanthropy. I dance alone in the dark, listening to music brighter than comet tails, and I'll be damned if I'm not happy.

Damn that song! I don't even need to click the link to know what song that is!


I clicked the lin anyway!!!

A series of extreme situations that didn't always end well. My friend had to die in front of me for me to realise how short life really is, it scared me, a lot, turned me into a different person, really. I started to worry about everything which eventually turned into chronic anxiety attacks. The second event is when I had a long talk (and by long I mean we talked all day) with my ex girlfriend (who is also a good friend of mine) after she told me that she had been diagnosed with something which is going to shorten her life by half (she'll never live to see her grandchildren). It was all very philosophical and emotional, we talked about life and death what it all really means. Looking back I can't believe we talked about all that, it was like we were high or something.

Last week I saved a man's life. My dad talked to me that night and told me he was proud of me and that "in the end, it's stuff like this that really matters in life." Those words are just starting to sink in but they've already changed how I think of life.

I hate that something this extreme had to happen for me to be genuinely inspired but sometimes words aren't enough, sometimes you really need a kick in the balls to see what's right in front of you.

Basic training. Challenging, demanding but well worth it as it opened a world of new opportunities and I've made a lot of great friends. Unfortunately I'm the ONLY person out of everyone I've met to get sent to Idaho... Lonely here for now..lol

I think I'm one of those people incapable of having defining experiences. I haven't done anything particularly useful with my life so far, or had anything particularly jarring occur. I feel like I've always been the way I am.

Same. There's no one event which defines me.

There have been a few events which opened me up to new things, but that's it.

i haven't really had defining moments, but a couple of big ones worth mentioning:
getting my job: i gained a llot of friends, and am no longer an introvert (mostly)
moving from NZ to australia two-and-a-bit years ago.
six months ago i was hit by a car. that taught me to be careful around roads... but i'm still a little scared of a certain intersection now...

and before i was even born, i had two big things: my right ear is deformed and half-deaf. and my oesophagus was attached to one of my lungs (surgery fixed it the day i was born, but i still cannot eat liqourice or nacho chips without extreme caution)
all this, and i'm only 15.
edit: add Asperger's and developmental dyspraxia to all that