The First Day....

Today is the first day of the rest of my life....

It is amazing how quickly life can be altered.  One day you are headed down the course you expected, the course you planned for yourself.  You may not know what lies around the bend or across the way, but it's familiar in its own right.  The next moment however, life can throw you a curve ball, or you wake up and realize that you aren't where you want to be and the path you're taking isn't going to get you there.  What then?

Until Monday I was engaged to one of my best friends.  He and I had been to hell and back, had our ups and downs, and loved each other with a love I will never be able to fully explain.  We survived one broken engagement, having separated for six months after being engaged for seven months, and I really felt like we had made a lot of progress on our previous issues.  We were more open and I voiced my concerns much more readily than in the past.

But something was eating at me, from the inside out.  Something wasn't right.  I prayed harder and harder everyday, praying that this gut feeling that was eating away inside of me was wrong.  I had begun to open up to friends about what we had gone through as a couple, how I was feeling about some of the issues I was voicing that kept getting ignored.  I'm moving to Iowa to start graduate school next month-far away from College Station and Texarkana.  Problems like we had couldn't be addressed from a distance that far.  I was worried, and I was being held back.  For weeks I didn't want to believe that to be true, but the more I examined it the more evident it became.  I knew that when I visited him in College Station last weekend, it would probably be the last time.

That was the longest drive ever.  I was miserable for the entire five hours.  But I knew I was making the right decision.  Luckily we were able to have some good times before I left-times that I will treasure for a lifetime.  He helped mold me into the person I am today, helped me to discover what I want out of life.  I hope that one day he can have the same realizations I have had.

Unfortunately, in all of this mess, I have also lost some friends, and one of my best ones, probably forever.  Funny how life works that way...

Now I am in limbo, waiting to see what happens next.  I am excited about what the future holds in a new place.  Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and I am sprinting towards it with everything I have.