This summer I hit rock bottom. For a year I thought I had my
life on track. I had a job, my own place, and was more independent that anyone
I knew that was my age. But then life got in the way. I’d quit my job in February,
as my employer was being unfair. Living off of school loans provided an easy
and logical fix. I mean, that’s what I had pulled the loans for to begin with. Then
in May of last year, my life tumbled quickly downhill. My landlord decided he
was selling his property, which in turn meant that I needed to find a new place
to live, and QUICK. I found a temporary place in Bunker Hill, which turned out
to be a wreck. I had a job for a matter of a month. The mother of my nanny
children lost her job so I was no longer of use to her. It was then decided
that my summer was to be spent rebuilding myself. After a stressful spring
semester, filled with drama and relationship issues, I had been looking forward
to making my summer about re-finding myself. Along the way I met a lot of new
people and had my heart broken- again. In late July my best friend and I were
both having relationship issues so we decided we needed a girls’ night.
After she got off work she came over to my place. We decided
we needed food to munch on, Monster to fuel us, and quite frankly my lil Honda
Accord, Freya, was out of gas. With all this in mind it was decided we were
going to Flying J, just miles from my house and it provided the cheapest gas
and cigarettes around. To top it off there was a 24 hour Subway inside. Who
doesn’t love Subway at 11 at night? So we ventured off to what we thought would
be a quick trip. We were so wrong!
It started off as a normal trip. I parked Freya at pump 16,
my normal pump. We went inside to get everything and to pay for gas. Jessi paid
for our food while I took a restroom break. I finished and paid for gas, while
Jessi took her own restroom break. Upon walking out I noticed two guys, roughly
my age, who had been eying Jessi and I since we had come in. They hollered “hey
beautiful” at me but I kept walking. I just wanted to get the gas in my vehicle
and quite frankly I knew that their claims of me being beautiful was just a
ploy. I mean, who the hell would think I was beautiful? My hair was unwashed
and still in the same French braid it was the day before, as I hadn’t washed it
and I’d been in the creek non-stop since the beginning of summer. I was wearing
raggedy sweatpants that had tears in the bottom from being four inches too long
and an old tanktop that was once pure black but had faded to a much lighter
black after two years of wear and washes. For Pete’s sake, I was even braless! My
flip-flops had seen too much creek water and were falling apart. To say the
least I was a mess!
Though I was able to ignore the boys Jessi was not. As I
finished pumping gas she exited the store and began talking with them. She
called me over and told me to pull Freya up from the pump. In my state of mind,
I had no common sense. Maybe I needed adventure in my life or maybe I just didn’t
feel like arguing with her, I’ll probably never know. My tattoo, Ecc 3:1-8,
tells me not to question God’s reasoning, so I try not to. We began talking
with the boys together. Somehow they convinced us to chill with them for the
night. Our plans of having a girl’s night were thrown to the wayside. Who wants
to cry when they can laugh instead?
One of the boys was right up my ally, a redneck gentleman.
He made me laugh and smile all night, nearly forgetting about my problems in
life. He sang country songs to me and pin-pointed everything I thought was a
flaw about me and somehow convinced me they weren’t flaws, but instead
beautiful imperfections. I never really believed in love at first sight, but I
really think it was just that.
I returned the next day with a hot meal for the boys. My
father was a trucker so I had a soft heart for the life style. I’d always been
told the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach anyway. They appreciated the
food. The southern gent, Ethan, seemed to really take a liking to me. We couldn’t
deny the mutual attraction. We knew what we wanted and we made it happen. On
September 12th, he asked me to marry him. I couldn’t be more proud
to admit I said yes. Today this man is my whole world. I couldn’t be happier to
have him in my life. We're each other's kind of crazy!
