Taking Control

Prologue

Taking Control

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Prologue

Have you ever looked back at your life, your memories, the good moments and the bad, and realized exactly what mistakes you've made? Have you looked at where your life has gone and thought about what you would have done differently? Everyone has. But when you look back in hindsight, are you able to pick out that one moment where everything changed?

If you have one of those moments, you're rare. Those moments don't happen to everyone. And if that moment changed your life for the better, you are incredibly lucky.

I was lucky. I had one of those moments where I can look back and say, 'That's when everything changed.'

I used to be the type of girl that waited for something exciting to happen. I was convinced that maybe if everything was done right, the universe would reward me. That naturally, something unbelievable would happen.

Instead, my life was completely average and totally boring. I was sick of the overpowering mundaneness and craved so much more. The big problem was that I didn't know what to do or how to get past the predictability that came with being just normal.

Then, that one moment happened. Granted, I didn't notice it at the time. You don't notice these moments until much later, if at all. But in that one anger-fueled moment, I took control.

John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." And it's true. When you stop paying attention to everyone else and do something for yourself; something you want to do, or need to do, everything can change.

After this moment, my real life, the life I really wanted, started. It was my senior year of college; I was 21 and had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. I was angry, sick and tired of my suffocating life; but what kicked me in the ass and made me do something about it wasn't something inspiring.

Actually, it was a combination of a lucky circumstance and a decision made out of pure hurt. I acted out, not thinking about the consequences. In that moment, I unknowingly allowed myself to get the life I always wanted.

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Now I lay staring at the stark white ceiling of a clean hotel room, thinking back on all of this. It wasn't easy to think about your life as if it's playing like a movie on the blank space above you.

It was strange, the obviousness of that moment in hindsight. Surely I should have known that exposing my deepest secret in front of the people closest to me, would change my life. The decision I made didn't seem so monumental then. It didn't seem anything actually; I just did it.

Where it took me could never have been predicted though. My former life was like a whole other world.

I hadn't seen anyone from home in a long time; not on purpose, I was just busy. Keeping in touch was really difficult. Although I would deny it if anyone ever asked, I did miss my friends and family. But despite the small piece of my heart that wanted them, I wasn't nostalgic. I could never, would never, give up or take back anything that had happened in the last nine months. I was finally content. I was happy. Finally I was no longer suffocating in that tiny college only miles from home.

My thoughts wandered to my friends back at school, Luke and Anna, and Lacey. Could Lacey even still be considered a friend? Hell no. I wondered if Jason and Lacey ended up dating, although it's doubtful that would last. I wondered if Luke or Anna ever thought and worried about me. My parents are probably driving my sister insane now that they lost control of me.