behind the writer
To understand just how amazing God has been in my life I should start at the beginning, the very beginning.
When I was a child I attended a Christian school. I did gymnastics. I played outside with friends, and I was apart of the fifty percent of children who would witness their parents divorce.
Actually, witness isn’t really the right word. I have maybe one or two distinct memories of us all being under the same roof. Even those recollections are so fuzzy they could have very well been fashioned by my own kindergarten imagination.
What I do distinctly remember is the visitations to my friends homes. The friends that had happily married parents, or so it seemed to my pre-adolescent mind, and children who enjoyed living with both their mom and dad. To me, their lives seemed perfect. This formed an insatiable craving to have my parents be together. As I grew older I realized that was not happening and my desires shifted. Contrary to the film “Parent Trap,” which I probably shouldn’t have watched, I was not going to coincidentally meet my long lost twin at camp and romantically entwine my parents hearts back in love. So, I began to desire something much more attainable, a family of my own. I knew that I could not control my parent's emotions, but I could control mine. I was hoping and waiting for the day that I could make my own perfect little family. This is were my trouble began. I didn’t really understand what I wanted. It’s like when you see a ballet dancer as a young girl and you think, “oh, I want to do that,” but you have no comprehension of the amount of work that goes into looking so effortlessly beautiful. Those dancers train for hours, diet relentlessly, and endure injuries and pain that others wouldn’t be able to handle and still they look exquisite. The married life is no different. I wanted it because of my eyes not my knowledge. But this impulse to find love stayed with me up into my high school years. By this time I still wanted a family and husband but it was not the driving force behind me dating Toddrick, my first and only real high school sweetheart. In fact, the first time I saw girls fawning over him at the lunch table I thought, “he’s alright, I guess.” Long story short I ended up dating him through out my entire junior year, but since he was a year older then me he was off to college while I was still in high school. I began to like the idea of a relationship with him more than the actuality and we split ways before my senior year began. Unlike the other boys I dated I really missed Toddrick when we broke up. We were actually best friends. But, I had to pick it up and keep it moving. I didn’t mind going into my senior year single. I had a lot of fun and created a lot of good memories in that last year of high school, but in the back of my mind I still wished that he was there to be apart of it. But, there was one last promise that Todd made to me before we broke up that would bring him around one more time.
He said, “No matter what happens I will still go with you to your senior prom because you went with me to mine.” days before breaking up.
He kept his word. I didn’t. I opted to take my best friend with me since we had gotten so close over that year. We ended up having a blast. I still told Toddrick that he could hang out with me after prom and he took the offer. Essentially, he chauffeured me around the entire night. We went to eat at a late night diner, hung out at a friends house and then he took me home. It wasn't until later on, after prom, I found out that a guy from the after prom party told Toddrick that I was cute, but instead of Toddrick agreeing he looked at the guy and said,”ugh, that’s my girl.” You can imagine the butterflies that were fluttering in my stomach when I heard this. Although I was New York bound for college we still had the summer so I decided to reach out to him.
After texting and talking on the phone we decided to hang out over the summer. He drove down from Bowie, Maryland to Baltimore and visited me when he was free. Just writing this makes me smile because I was so happy to have my best friend back. I even remember my mother saying, “ I see Toddrick slinking back around here, what’s up with that?” and I just said, “oh, nothing…” But it was something, it was definitely something.
