Despite anything that I’ve said or that’s ever been said about us, there wasn’t a moment when I didn’t love him. Even later, when things… unraveled, there was still a tiny frayed thread of love in me, even though I have never admitted it until now. I guess it’s true when they say that you’ll never forget your first love, because I never forgot him—and Lord knows I’ve tried! I mean, how can you forget about someone who helped pave the winding path that led to who you are today, when a memory of that person appears on a large, flashy billboard every fifty miles?

You can’t.

Sure, one day you’ll come to a fork in the road and you can choose the scenic, middle-of-nowhere, rural country road, versus the city strip that’s lined with reminders of days gone by. Despite the choice, you can’t avoid sighing nostalgically at a memory that plays on the radio or accidentally letting your mind wonder about the days that could have been. I’ve finally learned to sit back and enjoy the ride; what’s coming will come and it’s best to put the rocky and (sometimes) brittle path behind you and realize that you’ve survived it.

You survived those fifteen jobless months, you survived finals week, you survived through a year of marriage (or a sketchy divorce), you survived that car crash, you survived through winter depression, you survived that calculus exam, you survived raising six children by yourself. Yes, you survived.

Where does that survival theme stem from? As children our mission was to have fun, play hide-n-go-seek, win at dodge ball, recruit the recess field to play kickball… and then came high school. Survival is the key word many people use when they talk about their high school years. “I survived it and that’s all that’s important,” is the story I’ve heard too many times from too many people.

So there’s our culprit: those four years where we change from the thirteen year old adolescent to the legal eighteen year old ready to move away from home and, at the same time, we struggle to keep our heads above water in both academic and social standing.

Yeah, I survived high school: the bullies, the peer pressure, the hierarchy of beauty and the teenage, hormone-raging drama, but I lived it too.

​I also learned a lot about life, love, and myself. Being a teenager in high school is downright exhausting and difficult, but it’s also the last hurrah of adolescence and it should be celebrated! That is why I chose to start my story there—in those precious, fragile years where we begin to learn about the future through our past and present.