the day i almost died wasn't the day, shortly after my 16th birthday, that i got t-boned and nearly crushed by the steel door of my 1982 bmw. it wasn't any of the days in high school that i thought i'd be better off dead but was too scared to formulate anything more than a vague plan. it wasn't for that matter, any of the days of cancer and chemotherapy and radiation or the day, years later, that i decided to have my tits cut off and woke up, after 8 hours of surgery, wondering where the hell i was and what the hell i'd done. the day i almost died was the sunday after thanksgiving, november 26th, 2006.
that morning, when rory quietly walked away, i almost broke in half and died. and then, that night, when i realized he was never coming back, i did break in half. and then i broke in half again and again and again for days and days and days until i was tiny grains of sand and i couldn't break anymore. it wasn't pretty. at all. it was drained bank accounts and mistresses and lies heaped upon lies. it was my parents sleeping on the floor of my living room because i was too immobilized to be alone with the kids. it was legal papers and process servers and years of protracted proceedings. it was wishing and regretting and begging and negotiating. it was the world's saddest christmas and a shaved head. it was talking and writing about what i was thinking and feeling, endlessly. endlessly. i can remember every single moment of it and none of it at all.
looking back, almost 9 years later, that day, all those days that i almost died, crystallize to one conversation, one word. integrity. maybe it was just profound to me in hindsight, but sometime during the divorce i had a talk (okay, a million talks) with my dad about what i could control. namely myself, and my own behavior and nothing else. and integrity became the guiding principle of my life the moment he spoke the word. act with integrity. even when you don't want to. even when it would be easier not to. even when you want to be petty. have integrity. you will never be sorry.
