Being born - Yeah, pretty major changing point!

1. Moving to Wales (7 years old) - I've certainly changed in such a way that I couldn't see myself doing had I continued to live in St. Helens. As a result of this move and my parent's lack of employment, I've learnt a lot more things about how the world works, about the differences between living in the city and living in a more rural area and basically everything. All my growing up has happened in Wales, really.

2. Starting high school (11 years old)

Fairly obvious, I should think.

3. Ex-girlfriends (15, 15-17, 17 years old)

All three have changed and matured me in quite different ways. In one I've found and continued what was a great friendship anyway, in one I've dealt with rejection and built a decent friendship afterwards and in the last after suffering a ridiculous amount of stress, idiocy, immaturity and hurt I got myself out of there and am no longer as much of a pushover as I used to be. Also learnt that Scotland is full of very odd people.

4. Going to college

Instead of continuing at sixth form in my school, I decided to study the International Baccalaureate at a local college that got me involved with new people, new academic subjects, had to deal with moving out of my social comfort zone, improved my social skills and developed into a more thoughtful person overall. I also struck up what is now a fairly decent friendship with one of my teachers who is one of the people I have the most respect for.

5. Parents splitting up (17 years old)

Really shook me up and changed my entire life circumstances. Never expected anything like this to happen. Never saw myself comforting my mother about how dad might not be having an affair, only seeing dad once a week or so or even just not being told anything. I've really had to adapt to this fairly quickly by myself. I had to depend on my friend's a lot but really mature and learn to deal with things myself and just generally 'grow up' a lot.

6. Deaths of Ian & Cai (18 years old)

Ian: My seriously disabled cousin died back in March. This left his full time carer of a mother with entirely empty days and the loss of her son. The fact that someone who couldn't do anything wrong and wouldn't have even if he were able to could be treated so poorly by life really opened my eyes to the fact that life isn't fair.

Cai: The death of my friend in July, mere days before he was due to collect his exam results shook me up a fair bit. It seemed impossibly cruel for the person who had achieved the best results of the year didn't get to see them, someone with so much potential ahead of them and who was in the process of acting out a dream of motorbiking across the Americas suffered such a fate mere three days in. Really shook things up with me and my friends.

6. Internets

General meeting people, wouldn't be posting here now, etc. Too much to go into in much detail, I think.

8. Not going to University this year (18 years old)

Right now I could be studying for a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Feeling that the course wasn't the best idea for me (my writing isn't fantastic, I didn't want to give up studying History, etc), that I wasn't mature enough and assorted other reasons, I now sit here on Jobseeker's Allowance, unemployed despite 4 months of trying for a job, applying through UCAS again instead of drinking in Norwich. Unbelievably major change that I didn't make!

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I mean, that's only really touching the surface. There's so many moments in a person's life when everything could changed based on an event that lasts a short time but has effects that resonate for years later. I really don't feel I've done things justice here, but I think if I were to go into proper detail that firstly I'd have to write an autobiography, I'd have to really outline every possible moment when something could have seriously changed and also my life now is such a complete combination of utter coincidences at times, there are millions of different lives I could be living if not for such moments.