QotD: Challenges I’ve Faced

What challenges in life have you conquered and emerged from a better person?
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I've survived.  Of course, that probably doesn't seem like a lot.  I mean, most of the time, it doesn't seem like all that great of an achievement to me.  Lots of people survive.  Lots of people survive a lot worse things than the things that I've been through.  

The way I see it, though, is that no two troubles are the same.  Circumstances can be similar, challenges can be set in the same terms, and yet it's never the same.  

I was not molested by a trusted family friend, my parents did not chain me up in the closet and feed me table scraps, I was not any more neglected than the next kid from a big family.  Which makes my life seem incredibly easy to survive, you know?  No severe physical trauma, no birth defects, no learning disabilities, just... me.

So what does it matter if I survived?  So far, I've not even faced any challenges.  But everyone's life is an overall challenge, we just have different smaller (and not so small) challenges along the way.  But surviving long enough to consider these sort of questions is pretty hard for a lot of people, and the fact that I've managed to do it surprises me sometimes.  

So, my little challenges that've made it so hard to survive up until now: physically, emotionally, and psychologically abusive siblings.  The loss of my twin.  Being disowned by a parent.  Being gay.  A total loss of self.  Depression.  Anxiety.  Nervous breakdowns.  Being outcast to the point where I quite literally had nobody that I could even consider a friendly face.  Rape.  Being mugged.  Permanently damaging my ACL (it's a tendon in your knee, damaging it affects your ability to do almost anything physical on it until it's fixed, usually by surgery.  I never had the surgery.).  Asthma.  

And I'm sure there's more, they're just too little to even remember.  The thing is, we're challenged.  Every day.  Every hour.  Every minute.  Every second.  Life pushes us, and we've got to push back or we'll be pushed down, and if you're pushed down enough, there are times when you won't be able to get back up.  Life is this series of challenges, but the challenges themselves don't matter.  It's how you deal with them and how you emerge after them.  I'm not proud of the way that I've handled some of my challenges.  I didn't handle them well and I have to live with how I've handled them, and, if possible, try to fix them.  But it's not so much about fixing the past.  You can't, really.  You can just make yourself feel better about them.  You can make yourself accept that you've done some things wrong, but you can learn from them and you can move on.  I think one Alabaster Willem said it best: "It's the things ye've done that can't be changed.  All ye can do is figure out what comes next."

It's something I've learned recently.  It's not the challenges that matter.  Everyone's got challenges.  It's how we react to them and how we endure after them.  There's an old saying/song lyric that goes, "Life's a journey, not a destination."  Well, the challenges are just the pot holes and speed bumps.