No pain; no gain.

Buffy sums up this blog post, so just read this if you want to skip my musings:

"Here's the thing. There's moments in your life that make you. That set the course of who you're going to be. Sometimes they're little, subtle moments. Sometimes... they're not. I'll show you what I mean.

In the end, you're always by yourself. You're all you got -- That's the point.

Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are going to come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are. You'll see what I mean."


So yeah big moments.  Relationships, crisis points, deaths, births, moves, jobs, traumas, hurts, heartbreaks: they come, we all face them, it's called life.  I try to live my life with no regrets, currently there's only one thing I regret, and even still I'm not sure I'd have chosen differently given a second chance - I'll blog about this soonish.  Despite all the badness in a life, all the hurts, all the pain, all the things that fucked you up as a child, all the medcial issues so many of my friends have had, all the lost loves, the ones who died, the friends who killed themselves, the heartbreak of the relationships that didn't work out, the fights with the parents, the loss of best friends, all these things, they make you who you are.  You grow stronger from them, you learn lessons, lessons which you have to learn 10 more times over before you understand them, they feed into you and form the person you've come to be.  They've led you to the life you've led,  Each bad occurance, each time you become a victim of circumstance, each trial you have to endure, every wrong decision, have all led you just as equally, to the right ones you've made, and have yet to make, in your life.  People talk about how they wish x hadn't happened, or that they'd done y differently, or their childhood had been different, even I do, and I'm not denying that some people have had truly awful and pitiable lives, nor am I denying that there haven't been pains I've wanted to suffer on behalf of friends, so they didn't have to feel them.  But i think its stupid to realistically want to give up these bad parts of you.  You might as well give up the good parts of you.  A million and one different things would have changed because you turned left instead of right. 

You might argue, but they didn't make me stronger, I'm now shy and socially awkward, but maybe, one day, you'll meet a guy, or girl, who's attracted to you because you're not working your way round the room, because you like to read, because you'd rather sit in the corner and ignore the world that down another shot, so take it as it comes.

The bad moments will happen, I can't help that I'm afraid.  So embrace them.  Hate them.  Cry about them.  Attack them.  Drink them into oblivion.  Lose yourself in them.  Or not.  Ignore them.  Be positive.  Always look to the future.  See the silver lining.  Whatever works.  There is no wrong response.  Even those that end in jail.  I'm not saying people have a destiny.  I'm saying take something from the big moments, a lesson, a feeling, a new band that an ex introduced you to, whatever it is.  But learn to accept them as part of you.  All those bad things gave you the good memories you have.  You have your childhood best friend precisely because of all the shit you suffered.  You had that great day out precisely because you went out with that cheating insensitive bastard.  You ended up travelling like others only dream about precisely because you were broke and homeless and ended up hitchhiking to escape yoru life. 

"From such small things, from such critical points, the universe and its masses may be moved..."


P.S.  Nathan has just informed me that if you now google 'osmosifying' my blog is in the search results.  It's my way of giving back to the world, little by little.