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When I was younger I dreamed of being fancy.  I dreamed of being from an old southern family with class and money.  I dreamed of growing up to have a husband, three kids, a dog, a perfect house on the perfect street and absolutely no problems.  In fact, when I was young and dreaming I never even knew that problems existed.  That is how idealistic my childhood was.  A guy I dated once told me that my family was too normal and too close to the American dream.  I honestly had no idea what it meant to have troubles. And this was at age 24.

I don’t think I knew anyone who didn’t go to college until I was 22.  That is one year after I finished my undergraduate work.  I went to a private school my entire life.  I truly did not realize there was an option of not going to college.  I lived in a bubble safely protected from the real world.

I’m the kind of girl that strangers stop on the street to let her know she is beautiful.  I don’t say this to say I am any better than anyone else.  It is just something that happens to me. Maybe this happens to everyone.  It’s my hair.  Auburn curls; the red from my namesake (my grandmother Mary) and the curls from my mother.  The only other things I got from my mother are my hips and my lack of coordination.

I never did anything wrong my entire life.  My family moved three hours south to Meridian, Mississippi when I was in the tenth grade.  My father, a headmaster, had a new job at a new school.  It was at a school outside of the delta.  It was a school outside of segregation…at least as far as I was concerned.  There was one African American student at my new school.  I remember going to a football game with friends and riding to the game with him, the black student. I wouldn’t sit in the back seat of the car with him because I thought it was wrong.  A fifteen year old in modern day thought it was wrong to sit in the back seat of a car with an African American male.  Yes. I am ashamed.

I lost friends in college because I was what the infamous they call a tee-totaler.  I did not drink before I turned twenty-one.  It was illegal.  And heaven forbid I do something illegal or wrong or against my parents’ wishes.

My first kiss came at the age of twenty-two.  I was a second semester graduate student and it was Valentine’s day of 2008.  I was instantly in love.  I thought that God had saved me from heartache for one special man.  I was wrong.

He broke my heart.  After a year and a half of good and bad he broke my heart.  He said he never wanted to marry me.  I resisted.  I quit.  I moved home to my parents.  I stopped eating.  I barely continued.  My parents did probably the best thing they have ever done for me.  They kicked me out.  “We will pay for you to move.  Just get out and find a job.”