Crossroads

 Crossroads

Do you ever look back at your life and wonder what would have happened if you had made a different choice?  Where would you be now?

I don't wonder this often because I have learned to live with my choices. I weighed them, I pondered them, and I threw the dice and went with them. But what if ... the dice had landed a different way? 

My first big crossroads happened the year I graduated from High School. I was dating a man who was a year younger than me. His parents weren't too happy with that and offered my parents an ultimatum: either your daughter breaks up with him, or we ship him to his cousins. I weighed this one out. I loved the guy. He was smart, wonderful, handsome, and funny. Why should I break up with him? It wasn't my fault that his parents couldn't handle the fact that we were in love. But then again, it was young love. Puppy love. First love. If I stayed, they would send him away. Could I live with that? No. I broke up with him and went to college in Rexburg. 

Crossroads number two. I am the eldest of six children. I chose to go to college in Idaho at the last minute. (Courtesy of the breakup). It was a fun experience. I was finally away from Utah and discovered a whole new world. Kinda. Rick's College was under BYI. A fairly Mormon college, but hey, it was in another state. I met a young man named Willy, from Long Island, New York. New York! That was way on the other side of the United States! We fell in love. He asked me to marry him. I said yes. He had high dreams. I traveled back to Long Island to meet his family. They were wonderful. I loved them all. And I loved Long Island. I wanted to live there. Willy and I got married.

Crossroads number three. He had a job in Long Island but wanted to finish College in Idaho. I was fine with that. I could support him. I could go back to school or get a job. We left the beautiful green trees, the culture, the history, and drove back to Rexburg, where he enrolled in classes and dropped out to become ... a Domino's Pizza Manager.  What!?   This is one I go back to all the time. What would have happened if we had stayed in Long Island? Where would we have ended up? Would we have moved to the big city? Who knows? We weighed the pros, the cons, and thought about it, and went with Idaho.

Choices...

The Domino's Pizza owner promoted Willy to a manager position and transferred him to Boise. We were notified of this on a Friday. He had to be there by Monday. I had three days to pack up our belongings. I was not happy about this. But I learned how to pack things quickly, and how to notify the bills of what was going on. Willy and I moved to Boise. The company put us up in a hotel. We dropped all of our belongings off at Domino's, where he would be in charge. The regional manager was not too happy about this, but hey, we'd moved over a weekend. What the hell were we supposed to do? While Willy got to know the ins and outs of the business, I spent my days (for three weeks!) searching for a place to live. Everything I looked at was pea green. Seriously. I hate pea green. Finally, I found a fully furnished one-bedroom apartment in the historic downtown of Boise on the second floor. (You need to remember, we were newlyweds and didn't have any furniture other than my cedar chest.) 

This was a fun apartment. Willy and I turned twenty-one and really had a good time. His brother moved in with us for a bit. We made some good friends. We moved from that one to a basement apartment. I got a job at a pet store in the mall. I was in charge of the puppies and worked with a local veterinarian. He said he would mentor me. In college, becoming a veterinarian was my first choice. My second was psychiatry. I was thrilled. But ...Willy was tired of the 90-hour weeks at Domino's. I told him to look for another job. I found a house down the street. An old Victorian, two-story, for an excellent price. And Bam!

Crossroad number four. Willy's mom had remarried and moved to Washington State. Her new husband offered Willy a job as a mechanist for Boeing. 

Now ... there was a bit of resentment here. I had a job I enjoyed, and I was being offered an internship in a job I was interested in. Why couldn't he get another job? Why did we have to move? But move we did. I had six pet rats, an African grey parrot, and two ferrets. We packed everything up and drove to Washington State. 

It was hands down the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I fell in love with the place the minute we entered Seattle. The trees! The buildings! The ocean! The rain! And then we arrived at his Mom's log house in the hills. I cried. Big, tall evergreen trees stretched to the heavens. Rain fell in a soft drizzle. Everything was green. The smell was fresh. We pulled in and parked, and Willy looked at me. "There's something you need to know," he said. "The ferrets and the rats are not allowed in the house." I refused to go in. I argued. There was no way I was going to leave my rats outside. It was an open-air garage. They would get cold! The ferrets maybe--they were his brothers, but not the rats. Willy went inside and negotiated. The rats were okayed. I said, "Fine," looked him square in the eyes, and said, "I will probably end up divorcing you in this state." 

Willy and I lived with his Mom for a few months before finding a place in Stanwood. It was a 45-minute drive from where we worked. (I could go into a lot of detail here, but let's just gloss this over.) We both worked two jobs. We rarely spent any time at home with the animals. We got a dog and a cat. It was a constant struggle. We bickered a lot. We sold that place and moved to Everett. We were closer to work, but were financially and emotionally struggling. And then ...

Crossroads number five. My friend Jay invited me to an LGBTQ bar where I met a woman named Lou. And everything changed. 

Have you ever met someone who made your soul sing? That was Lou.

What would have happened if I had stayed with Will? Would we have gone to counseling? Would we have worked things out? Who knows. At the time, he was interested in another woman. I took my half of the relationship and jumped into the arms of a vibrant, dynamic woman. And we were happy. For nine wonderful years, we were happy and then ...alcohol. Louie always swore that when the Doctor told her it was time to quit drinking, she would quit. But the last three years of our relationship, I was no longer the love of her life; alcohol was, and alcohol likes to push away those who care. We lost a lot of friends. They couldn't handle her anger. Health issues cropped up, and we went to the doctor. He told her the band had stopped playing and left the building. He told her she needed to quit drinking or die. We drove home. I told her we could get help, that I would support her, stand by her, be with her. She looked at me and said, "How can you ask me to give up what I love the most?" 

It broke my heart. I thought I was what she loved the most. 

She called up my parents, told them we were moving to Utah, and packed up my belongings. She sat outside where I could hear her and berated me to whoever was drinking with her, said hateful, hurtful things, knowing I could hear every word! And still ...I loved her. I knew it was the alcohol talking. 

Crossroads number six. I moved back to Utah.

What would have happened if I had stayed? 

This is the one I come back to the most. What would have happened if I had argued against her? If I had booked her into a facility? Where would I be now? Would I have become an alcoholic? Would she have lived longer? 

I will never know how my life may have turned out if I had chosen a different path. No one will. We all come to crossroads, and we make decisions. Are they right? Are they wrong? We don't know. We will never know. We weigh the pros and cons, look into the options, and toss a coin. I can ask "what if" all I want, but it doesn't matter. What matters is now. I chose a path, and I will walk it. I'm still trying to figure out where the hell it is going.