This is the second Facebook note I'm bringing over here. On the 29th of April, 2013, I started a new job. It was a dead-end job, for barely-scraping-by money, but it was steady work. I was relieved, having just come off a year of either no work, or temporary freelance work. On the 11th of May, 2013, on the way home from my last day of training, I stopped at a gas station to use the restroom. When I came out, my Jeep Cherokee wouldn't start: the starter was bad. However, only the night before, my best friend and I had figured out a way I could get it to start, under the hood. This time, however, I forgot that I had parked the truck in first gear. As son as the truck started, it ran me down, and broke my left femur. The following was post described my thoughts a week later. Revalation in the Orthopaedic wing May 20, 2013 at 9:49pm Monday Morning, and somewhere, it's rush hour. Somewhere in all this, (the 13th, I believe) was the seventh anniversary of my last argument with my wife, and the 16th, then, was the day I told her I was done, that while we might keep a single household for the boys, we were going to get a divorce. I had been mulling over our argument at work, and it was only when I realized the example I was setting for the boys, that it occurred to me that it was time to declare enough. Then, in September, Mom got her diagnosis: a baseball-sized tumor on her right lung. We lost Mom the day after Christmas, just hours before Mom's first Granddaughter, Missy, was born. Dealing with divorce, death, financial crises,trying to figure out life as a grown-up, on my own, led to years of tribulation, a plummeting credit rating, gaining weight at a rate of 10 pounds a year, etc. I was beginning to really wonder if I had broken a mirror somewhere. I was hoping and praying that, somehow, my seven years of bad luck was coming to an end, with the seventh anniversary of that last argument, and then I managed to run myself over with my own truck. So clearly, the seven-year theory was flawed: things were (and are) cascading together, and are going to get worse, until I make them better. Life has forced me to stop and deal with things: i have a new job, but I CANNOT work: at least, not for the next couple of months. I don't have a car. I don't have income. I have legal cases that I'm about to put into a bit of a limbo, until I can physically walk into court. i am forced to minimize my life, and to deal with all the little issues I've ignored, which have only made them worse. I must now stand (figuratively) and fight my demons. I have no choice. The other day, I was thinking: if I had only made SURE the truck was out of gear, I'd have driven home, gone for a short hike, spent the next day dealing with laundry and legal paperwork, gone to work Monday, and spent the past week working and hoping to somehow get caught up on a few things. I felt a sudden sense of loss: That's all? Life would have (barely) gone on? I'd be going to work, coming home, having legal battles with the ex, missed my boys, and lived by myself with too many belongings, with no plan, no pattern, no real change, no progress, and, well, lemme just say it: no sex. I would not be, in my own life, the man I want to be. I'd be living that life of "quiet desperation" that I had always lived, only now I'd be solely responsible for my non-life. I have the chance to rebuild myself, make myself better than I was before: better, stronger, faster. It's not going to be easy: it'll mean facing my fears; it'll mean changing lifelong patterns; worst, and scariest of all, is that it will mean that I will have to depend on someone I've never been able to count on, someone who hasn't had my back, who has always managed to weasel out of fighting for me. I'll have to depend on ME. It's going to be scary, standing my ground and fighting to carve a meaningful life for myself, but a shattered leg is a small price to pay for the chance to stand and make real change.