It only took a few seconds.
That's how much time elapsed from a sound, becoming an incident, that became the vicious impact that changed the person I was at that time, into the person I would become/am today. How this person is described is dependent upon the factor of who it is that is making a statement about me.
As the storyteller, I can be any character I choose, but am I being truthful?
Am I the infallible hero, the one who rarely makes mistakes? Or, am I the flawed person who messes up from time to time, and who can and does get things wrong?
Am I as the storyteller willing to let my blemishes show?
I lost my credibility a long time ago in telling my story. I did this by trying to hide from my damaged truths. I tried to appear "normal", not inured, not impacted, not in pain. I failed, I went to the edge of that chasm from which I could not have come back: suicide!
I miss some parts of me that I have not seen in a long time. The self-assured me, the imaginative and inventive me. The me who doesn't peek from a distance before simply looking out of a window in his own house.
Yes, I miss that guy.