At this moment in my life, I had yet made a conclusion about the greatest answer that eluded me since I was a kid; does god exist? I do admit that up to that point I was always skeptical, but never ruled it out. My biggest skepticism was based on the fact that I could not understand how so many people believed so many different things on the matters of god. Secondly, I could not square any creationist story about man with evolution. Lastly, why do so many people suffer in the world?
So 14 years پہلے today, that was my mindset on god. As I sat on the bed, looking at pictures, my girlfriend came in to the room and told me she wanted to دکھائیں me something. I said, “All right”, and continued to look at the pictures. After around 30 سیکنڈ یا so, my head looking down at pictures, I could sense her standing right in front of me. For a تقسیم, الگ کریں second, as I sensed her doing something in front of me, I looked up. As soon as I looked up, I saw her playing with a gun. Before I could do anything, a gunshot went off and threw me back on the bed.
“What just happened?” I thought, as I laid on the بستر with both arms standing straight up and my long legs from my 6’2 body were over the edge of the بستر and planted on the carpet. I heard my girlfriend screaming as I sat there trying to assess my situation. I was in shock and my body was numb. I began to see blood spurting from my neck area. “This can’t be good”, I thought. I realized at that moment, I had been shot in the neck area.
Shot in the neck, blood coming out, I knew at that moment death was close. Death was going to happen, no doubt. My short brief time on earth, 23 years, will be coming to an end. As I began to accept my fate, in the face of death, several things happened. The first was, I thought of the grief of my immediate family. Thinking of my grieving parents at their 23 سال old son’s funeral, along with my older brother and sister and my young niece, was worse than actually death itself. In my own acceptance of my death, this is a thought that made me sad beyond imagination. The سیکنڈ thought was, “what will happen when I’m dead? Will the lights go out? Will there be an afterlife and I will be transformed to another place?" In the face of death, I had no last conversion, no last apologies for my mistakes in life. I made no requests یا asked no forgiveness from any god. At that very moment, I simply accepted that I lived a good life and made some mistakes. If there was a god, he would understand. A calm came over me as I accepted my fate and just closed my eyes to tune out the chaos around me so I could die. It was, in retrospect, the single most important moment in my life. I was experiencing death, the submission to it and acceptance of it.
After 20 سیکنڈ with my eyes closed, I realized, I was still alive. I opened them up and began my quest to live. I was losing blood, but my breathing was fine. My girlfriend, who accidentally shot me, was calling 911 while screaming and crying and began to apply pressure with a rag to stop my bleeding. As all of this was going on, my thoughts switched from death to life. I began to think about life in paralysis. Being shot in the neck no doubt would most likely paralyze me. I could not اقدام my arms, but I could اقدام my legs. I began to اقدام them and remember thinking that was a great sign; I will be able to walk.
As the paramedics arrived, I began to think that that I will live. I was airlifted to the hospital where they put me under anesthesia and I woke up the اگلے دن to the wonderful site of my beautiful mother. I was alive. An accidental shooting almost took my life. The bullet entered into my right cheek, traveled through my throat and in doing so, severed my right vocal cord and carotid artery. It found its resting place in my back, but not before chipping my 4&5 vertebrae, causing both motor and sensory nerve damage to my right arm.
So my quest for جوابات had begun. I was spared death because I was born with a bilateral blood supply to my brain. My تلاش for جوابات did not begin سے طرف کی saying, “I survived, and god did it.” It began سے طرف کی saying “Let me take a shot at investigating this thing called life”. That’s was 14 years ago, in 1997. It wasn’t until 2005, 8 long years later, that I became an atheist. It was 8 years of self-education and observations that drove me to the conclusion that god doesn’t exist. That’s another blog, another day. So today, on the 14th anniversary of the beginning of my own journey, I appreciate that I am alive. I love my family and friends, and I hope to live a long happy life, as an atheist.
