2 Life-Threatening Traumas That Prompted Personal Growth
(A Story From Chapter 3 of Refined by Fire: A Self-Help Memoir)
As an adolescent, I was content with simply getting by. Though I would set goals and work toward them from time to time, I was often driven by instincts and the directions given to me by others. I was well into my mid 20s before I wholly embraced the idea that there must be more to life than that which was directly in front of me– the things that I could see with my eyes and hear with my ears. Sure, I had gone to church and been introduced to religion. I had been told by various people about all the things I should do to better myself. I also understood the concepts of destiny and fate, though, up to this point, these ideas seemed distant and unrelatable. To be honest, none of this made much sense to me then.
“no one within my circle of influence took the time to explain to me the importance of figuring out my purpose and walking in it. In retrospect, maybe they didn’t share this information with me because they didn’t know it themselves; maybe they were just trying to stay afloat and keep their heads above water as I was.”
I had not yet considered that these notions might apply to my own life. Furthermore, no one within my circle of influence took the time to explain to me the importance of figuring out my purpose and walking in it. In retrospect, maybe they didn’t share this information with me because they didn’t know it themselves; maybe they were just trying to stay afloat and keep their heads above water as I was. After years of trial and error (And I can’t stress enough how much error was involved), I realized that I was overwhelmed by the constant curveballs that life had thrown. In less than 7 years of adulthood, I had witnessed the death of a parent, endured a suicide attempt involving prescription medications by the other a few years thereafter, experienced extended periods of isolation from my loved ones while in the submarine Navy, and a host of other troubles- from fist fights to being on the unfortunate end of multiple police officer’s gun barrels. The worst part of all this was that most of these situations did not come about because of any actions that I took. Many of my lowest moments came about because of misunderstandings or due to decisions of others.
For example, I once found myself boxed in by two police cars with two additional police cars positioned so that I could not drive away. To further complicate the situation, I had at least six Providence, Rhode Island police officers draw their service pistols on my friend and I while we were simply stopping for Jamaican food after having a few drinks on a Saturday night. It turns out the police had handcuffed someone who ran to a car that apparently looked like mine. Their poor policing ended up being my problem, though I’m fortunate that it didn’t result in my death. They offered an excuse and apologized after things were cleared up, but that did nothing to change that I was one sudden move away from execution by firing squad. Moreover, I had to take this incident in stride because I was only 19 while the legal drinking age was 21. I had willfully placed myself in a vulnerable position and given away my legal leverage. So, since the police and I were both in the wrong, the situation was a wash. The fact that I tied my own hands by moving sloppily and making poor decisions was a lesson that I’ve carried since then.
“During this commotion, I overheard one among the men standing near the trunk of a car assert that they planned to take the lives of a group of men who I’m certain included me. Dying wasn’t on my agenda for that night, and since I was unarmed, I made it to my car, laid low, and waited for my friends to meet me there.”
Then there was the time when I fought more people than I can remember because a friend of mine was getting beaten up by strangers in a nightclub. We were in New Haven, Connecticut, a city in which we knew no one while the people who we were fighting seemed to know everybody. A minor altercation between a friend of mine and a stranger escalated to my friends and I getting jumped. Once the violence began coming at me from multiple angles, I knew that getting knocked down meant that I would likely be carried out of the establishment on a stretcher or worse. So, I mustered every ounce of aggression that I could and fought as if my life depended on it… because it did. After fighting for what seemed like ten minutes, being separated from my buddies and stuck in a building with scores of people who wanted to see my blood outside of my skin, having my life threatened, being the recipient of a sucker punch from a crowd of people screaming threats at me, and ultimately getting kicked out of the establishment, I stealthily avoided multiple men who were hanging out in the club’s parking lot. During this commotion, I overheard one among the men standing near the trunk of a car assert that they planned to take the lives of a group of men who I’m certain included me. Dying wasn’t on my agenda for that night, and since I was unarmed, I made it to my car, laid low, and waited for my friends to meet me there.
After the dust settled, I drove to pick up one of my four buddies up from jail. It turned out that after he was stomped out in the street by multiple men and eventually beaten by the night sticks of New Haven police officers, he was thrown into the paddy wagon and hauled off to the slammer. I later found out from the dispatcher at the police station that we likely were fighting because the club we stepped into that night was a known gang hangout, and we had likely upset people who had the means to complicate our lives for as long as we were on their stomping ground. Though an unfortunate way to find out, I learned this night that within me resides an aggression that I can tap into that will get me out of circumstances that would prompt most to fold without even attempting to stand their ground.
