There are a few things in my own life I would love the opportunity to go back and change but the one event that speaks to me strongest is the day I sat in my car watching Sigel board a bus while my heart screamed that this was the worst thing ever.

The story begins when my Parents realized that moving half way across the Country wasn't going to discourage Sigel from following. You see, they believed that I should have my High School boyfriend and then leave him behind when I went to college. You know, because that's what "they" do in all the romantic comedies my Mother is so damn fond of.

Sigel would travel every chance he got across three to four states to see me. This trip was different, though. I could feel it when we woke up the morning he was supposed to leave. My parents had no choice but to leave us in the house alone and we had done what any couple will do when left in a house alone- we had sex, lots of sex. More than that we talked, really talked. I knew instinctively that my parents were just about to ratchet up the pressure on me to break it off with him and I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board.

I drove him to the bus station...yes that was part of the plan my parents had devised because my Father was retired by this time but if I had to drive him and watch him get on the bus I might realize it hurt too much and tell him not to come back. I am not imagining this line of thinking; my Mother admitted that this was the plan a few days after he left.
I felt like I couldn't breathe as we neared the bus station. I shook from head to toe. Everything inside of me was screaming that I should go home and pack my stuff and just go with him. I was, however, a dutiful child and so I let him get on that bus. As it pulled away I just kept following the bus hoping he would look up and see me. He never did and about 50 miles later I stopped, got some gas, and cried all the way home. He has no idea how long I followed that bus to this day.

I wish I could go back and help myself pack my little car, give myself the courage to break away and live my own life earlier than I eventually did. Honestly, I think my life would have been better if not easier. I would have been able to get myself straight and be my own person sometime before I sucked Sigel into the nightmare my life was going to become. Then again if I had done that I might never have had our two amazing daughters or met our beloved partner Arch. I more than likely would never have had my son.

I like where my life is heading and I have fought hard to get here but maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't have had to be such a struggle if I had listened to that voice in my heart.