crossroads

I have so much to write but I really don't want to. I have laid myself out raw in front of everyone and the whole world who cares to read knows more than I do sometimes about what is happening in my life. My short term memory has been failing me because there is so much to remember lately. Because of that fact and the fact that I have been encouraged to continue my writing I sit here in front of my computer wondering how to start this next chapter. Quite literally.

Timing is everything and the foreclosure papers we received one week prior to Dustin's scheduled departure did in fact stop him from going back into the military. On the appointed date I drove Dustin to Ukiah for a recruiter to take him to Sacramento for someone at MEPS to tell him that he was not going anywhere. Nowhere but back home anyway. Not only was this military path one that was supposed to pull us out of our own personal economic disaster, it was a break for Dustin and I.

This life, married, hasn't been all that. There have been the highs, but then there have been the lows too. All marriages ride the roller coaster we have been on for the last 12 years. Some people enjoy the thrill of seeing what's around the next skyscraper bend and the weight of the stomach dropping lows. Some learn not to get back on the rides that made your head spin and emptied the contents of your stomach. Some never learn. And some get on a new ride altogether and start on a track they never should have ventured down.

To say I am at a crossroads does not cover the true nature of where I am at right now. Adam will resume public school next week so that I may look for a job in this small economically challenged town. My house will be sold off in January and I will need to find a new place to live with my three children. One that I can afford, very possibly on my own. Taluelah will be placed in daycare. I cannot begin to explain the heartbreak I feel when I write that. Moments like this I think back upon a college career started and then cut short. I think a lot about the warnings against having children so young and with someone hardly known. I think about choices and how the consequences of my actions affect the amount of opportunity available. I think about all of this, but then I stand back and remember how it felt to fall madly in love with a young Marine so long ago. How I felt when I held my first baby boy and looked into his sweet brown eyes. How any number of moments have caught my breath or made me scream or driven me mad and made me realize that this is what life's all about. While there are some things I might change given the chance, I have no regrets. Never have, never will.

I will cry and be sad and be hurt and be angry. I will try to figure out if there is anything worth salvaging from the remnants of 12 hard fought years. Maybe there is. Maybe another door is closing. Only time will tell. But I have my boots on and I am walking, because that's just what I was made to do.