The world would have been at your feet @El-loco. All that wonderful naivety, innocence, hope, ambition ... Mind you looking at your profile picture you still look youthful for your age.

It will start if I ever win the lottery! But I don't play much. Gladly I don't define my life starting by needing a man in my life, I'm single and like living alone so I guess it started when I discovered I was independent and could live on my own without the need of being in a relationship. Whew!

I wasn't there at the time but the something that defined the start of my life probably involved a little wine and my future dad telling my future mom a few sweet lies. You know, like everyone else.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I consider the beginning of life to be when I made my first sound on my own, you know that cry at birth. Until then I was just an extension of my mother, no different than say an appendix.

I went to Berkeley CA at age 18 for a summer job and ended up staying for 30 years. Going from my family's home in a sleepy small town in New Jersey to the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement and the city of the campus of the University of California was a real awakening.

August of 2002: I had a car, a job, lots of cool stuff, and friends that I thought cared about me.

September of 2002: I was in the hospital, which would last weeks. Then, I was sent to a nursing home, which lasted years. I went through several operations, including an amputation and a 5 way bypass.

I had to move out of my house, which was rather difficult given my circumstances. Friends offered to store my stuff, including my car. What great people.

These same friends decided I had way too much stuff, and they had too little. This included irreplaceable things: personal stuff, like relics my dad brought back from WW2, personal items, and so on. I have no pictures of my parents or my sister now. Anyway, these 'friends' divided all of my stuff, took it, and flew off to the winds. To excuse this, they made up some wild story about me. I'm not even sure what that is: I just know that mutual friends avoid me.

2005. I pulled myself up. I got an inheritance from my mother's estate. I got a decent apartment, a car, a job, and a girlfriend. But when they gave me that 5 way bypass in 2002,, they used a chemical called trasylol. It destroyed my kidneys. I had to go on dialysis. Which meant health insurance. My job didn't have health insurance.

So I had to go on The Dole: I had to do a spend down, spending what was left of my inheritance. I couldn't afford to keep up my car, and sold it as junk for $100. I had to move out of my apartment., as well as quit my job. And then my girlfriend left me.

And it all started up in September of 2002. I'm pulling myself out of that rut. I won a legal settlement because of that trasylol thing: I got $60,000, which is chump change considering what I have to go through now.

When I decided to think for myself....at the grand old age of 70

I should have put the link into the OP. It's dropped off the bottom of the page.

Surprised at how many of you have suffered abusive episodes in your lives.

This site has openned my eyes in quite a few ways.

I feel like I truly started living life a few years ago after escaping an abusive relationship. Life is too short not to enjoy the present, say yes to all fun things, and value your freedom. That's how I've been trying to live my life since then.

It was approximately 65/66 when my perception of abuse towards me, initially woke me up. My knowing it was wrong without knowing why it was wrong, started questions I could not answer. So I have been awake and thinking since before I could walk or talk, my thinking mind could talk to me, as I questioned everything around me. Life is a, "cause and effect" event , just like science has proven physics to be . We live in the "effect " of our lifes actions, ( causes ) so we are the result , ( the effect ) of everything we have ever done , or has been done towards us. I am a very simple black and white , yes or no man , something either is , or it is not , I don't see grey as a possibility. I have had several starting points in life , of monumental proportions so I have a few :-/ .

Yes, I actually celebrate 2 birthdays. One I had no control over, my physical birth. The second was a conscious decision of my own to leave my abusive marriage, where I felt like a numb zombie most of the time. That was the day I gave birth to my true self, and I've flourished and grown happily ever since.

Apart from the obvious, life started when I left an abusive marriage. Life is too short to let your self be a doormat! Be happy!

I remember crawling to the front door as a baby in Haiti and looking at our dog Max's dog house, so far away across the grass, and wondering if I could make there, feeling desperate. My mom was too busy with mission work to notice me and didn't believe in cuddling kids, and I wanted some sort of creature contact.

I leaned more toward animals than humans in life, but it seems to have been my nature, since my siblings, who were treated similarly by my parents, didn't prefer animals for company.

My life has been discontinuous? I seem to have lived a few totally different lives, a boss of mine pointed out one day that the rest of the world just doesn't reinvent themselves like I do.My life as a child began at birth,
Single adult life began at 16 when I was living alone and working,
Married life began at 21, finished at 35
Life as a parent began at 26 still ongoing
Exec life 28 to 43 (mon-fri 9-5) over lapped but distinct from
Hippie 28-37 weekends plus 7 years full time
These days so many short term roles.
Most people who know me think of me as a banker, that ended 30 years ago and was 1/4 of my life.
I started the current phase of my life (4th retirement/semi retirement) almost 5 years ago.
It is all so disjointed I just can't consider it the one life.
Beam me up Scotty.

My birth.

I was still religious in those days. Joined a local church. Met a girl who has had me blocked everywhere for years. Lives in Sheffield now. What kind of life is that? See The Full Monty if you want to see Sheffield.