I am the bullet

[#00Buck]

I’ve been very lucky in life to have many close calls. I’m a huge fan of close calls because if you learn something from them you become a better person.

The only thing more surreal than the super slow motion effect that takes place when you are almost killed is the experience of having your life flash before your eyes. It’s really quick and it isn’t your whole life. It’s more like a rapid-fire slide show of things that happened to you. Why the brain selects the moments it does I have no clue. After the car stops spinning and comes to a halt sideway on the sidewalk and you reach down and touch your chest and legs and realize that you’re still in once piece, you get out dazed and vibrating from the adrenaline, which is then followed by shaking and tiredness from the adrenaline wearing off, which is then followed by introspection and self examination.

A near death experience is like getting your ass kicked in a fight. There’s something very philosophical that comes over you after just having your faced punched in. I’ve walked or crawled away from car crashes, having a sawed off shotgun shoved in my face, a convenience store robbery, tons of fights, half a dozen muggings, trying to jump my bike across things that were far too ambitious for me.

Sometimes I was uninjured. Sometimes I was permanently scarred. I have a scar on my chin from jumping my BMX bike off a parking garage and badly miscalculating the landing. The nurse kept telling me to stop moaning as she stitched up my chin. “I’ve given you painkillers you shouldn’t feel anything.” The reason I was moaning was her giant breasts were flopping all over my forehead as she leaned over to put in the stiches.

Just like my first ever bike accident there was at least one good thing that came out of every close call I’ve had. My wrists, thumbs, and ankles all crack and creak from being broken so many times. My spine has no cartilage left in it. I can literally feel the little grains of sand running between the bones when I lie down to sleep at night. I have scars but none of them are terrible or obvious. Plus my knees and joints are all damaged. But I’m alive and overall in good condition and I learned from every close call.

Every time I dodged a bullet I learned something.

I used to have a girlfriend in another city. Every weekend after work I would run into the parking lot and jump in the car and start my fast paced nighttime drive to go and see her. I’d drive flat out in the darkness with the music blasting swerving through the bends happy that I’d soon be with someone I was so in love with that it made my life wonderful. I had perfect days with her. Literally perfect. Then one day she told me she was moving away. Very far away. My heart sank and I knew that if I didn’t chase after her I’d never see her ever again.

She left. I cried.

I never forgot her. I still have every card and little gift she ever gave me. This all happened before the internet was a big thing. So one day I’m on Facebook many years later and I get a friend request. Guess who it was? I accepted and clicked on her profile and saw photos of her looking as beautiful as ever with a handsome husband and a child in her arms. I never wanted kids. I’ve never wanted to be a father. I did love her but I never liked all of the things that she liked. In that moment I realized that I never could have made her happy. She messaged me her phone number. We talked and I knew I still loved her. I didn’t ask her to say the same but I heard it in her voice.

After I hung up the phone I realized…

I was the bullet she dodged.

If she stayed with me neither of us would have been happy. She had to get away from me in order to have the life she needed to live. To this day I’m very happy for her. She has two kids now and it is awesome watching them progress as a family. I love the smile she has now. It is the smile I could never give her. I’ve always tried to be a good person. I never thought that I would be the close call that someone else would narrowly escape from. That’s exactly what I was to her and everyone I’ve ever had a relationship with.

I used to think that in the story of my own life that I was the hero. Now I see that I’m something else. I’m not a villain. I’m more like a car accident, tornado, or flash flood and although none of those things are evil none of those things have a conscience.

I do have a conscience. I don’t like being the bullet other people dodged. I try to think that by being in their life I’ve done more good than harm but I know that’s not true for all of them. I’ve accepted the fact that I am the bullet. I feel better about everyone who did learn something from their close call with me. I also feel bad for everyone who didn’t. 

[Conker]

I think you're being a bit too hard on yourself there. You assume the worst in this situation, that she dodged a bullet, but for all you know, her time spent with you bettered her in a way that made it possible for her to find someone to fulfill her life in the ways she wanted.

I mean, going "i was a stepping stone in her life" comes off as a bit shitty in its own way, but it's more productive than "I am the bullet that almost ruined her life metaphorically." Stepping stones are good.

You're playing with some what iffs here, and you're reading into another person who you have a deep connection with. It's possible you aren't seeing everything clearly.

 

At any rate, I don't have any near death experiences to talk of, which is good enough for me. Was in one car accident but it was a bump. Time did slow, and the adrenaline you speak of did come and go in that same way. Was nerve wracking as all fuck, but in the end, I was only out a few hundred bucks on cosmetic stuff. No big deal.

 

I also have no stories of bullets, metaphorical or otherwise. I could maybe follow one or two people down a dark, mind-trip, but it would be conjecture and not worth anyone's time. However, I was talking to my dad the other day over some burgers and beer, and he brought up the bullet he dodged. It was just after high school and he had been dating this girl for a few years. They were going to get married at some point probably, or at least, he saw himself marrying her. She was heading out to college and he was staying in his home town to work for a year and save up, but they would make it work. She wasn't going that far.

Within five days of being away, she was sleepin' around on him.

It hurts him but life moves on. About ten or fifteen years later, he's married to my mom and his high school reunion shows up. He goes and meets her, and her greeting is thus:

"Your wife ain't here and my husband ain't here. Want to come back to my motel?"

And my dad told me, "you know, if I had gone and married her, I'd just be another divorce statistic."

 

As often as the phrase, "you dodged a bullet" is used, I've never really thought about it in these terms. I mean, i told my dad straight up last night that he dodged a bullet, but I guess I rarely put two and two together, that people can BE bullets. It's interesting.

[#00Buck]

21 hours ago, Conker said:

I think you're being a bit too hard on yourself there. You assume the worst in this situation, that she dodged a bullet, but for all you know, her time spent with you bettered her in a way that made it possible for her to find someone to fulfill her life in the ways she wanted.

As often as the phrase, "you dodged a bullet" is used, I've never really thought about it in these terms. I mean, i told my dad straight up last night that he dodged a bullet, but I guess I rarely put two and two together, that people can BE bullets. It's interesting.

I'm not being hard on myself. I may have helped her become a slightly better person but I think the opposite is actually true. I think she made me a better person. Which is a bit of a minor miracle as I was pretty awful at the time. I used to be a total mess. Now I'm less of a mess but still working on a lot of things. I certainly take what you said as a compliment but I wasn't putting myself down. I think it was a really fair assessment of me at that point in my life. I'm not that person anymore so I don't mind saying that kind of stuff about the old me since that version of me no longer exists. 

Yeah, dodging bullets is crazy. The number of times I've narrowly avoided deadly STD's is also crazy. It is a shock seeing an ex girlfriend that looks like she has full blown AIDS. Kind of makes you feel like every day you're alive is like winning the lottery. 

[Endless/Nameless]

Insightful as always. Interesting viewpoint to consider. 

 

I was almost impaled by a knife flying out of the dishwasher. 

It was kinda cool actually.