Survivor Story: Gary Lachman
Gary Lachman
BEATING THE ALTERNATIVE
By Gary S. Lachman
Dedicated to the memory of Richard Raphael
I’m a different person
I’m a different person than I was in February of 2000. Throughout this ordeal, many people asked me if I felt I had changed at all. At first, I wondered what they were talking about. Later, in the deepest darkness of my despair, I suspected that I had undergone some fundamental psychological and spiritual changes. Many of these turned out to be nothing more than the offspring of temporary depression. But now I truly know. Although I don’t fully understand the actual metamorphosis of spirit, I know I’ve somehow changed. I imagine it’s akin to a when a tadpole loses its tail and sprouts arms and legs. It certainly doesn’t know that it’s a frog, but somehow it must feel that it isn’t a tadpole anymore. There’s something different about me – my thinking, my feelings, and my values. Sometimes, with a clue just beyond the horizon, I almost think I understand the changes. But most of the time, like the frog, I just blindly exist as I now am.
