Skipping Stones - COMPLETE

Chapter 17

2011

INSTEAD OF DRIVING straight to the house, I stop at the creek and park here first. Knowing them all too well, I know if they saw me come down the hill through that kitchen window, they'd be outside before the car was in the driveway to greet me. I need some time alone first to soak in the scenery, to remember how this became my life.

Standing at this place is like being fifteen all over again. Except the pain then wasn't bearable and now I'm almost thirty. It's still painful, but different. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed, and yet it still feels so fresh. Not a day goes by where I don't think about my parents, or Drew for that matter. You'd think that after all of these years I'd be over him, but when he left that summer day, he walked away with a piece of my crumbling heart. I've never been able to repair it.

Humpty Dumpty comes to mind. The king's horses could attempt to put me back together, but no matter how hard they'd try, it just doesn't seem possible. When I really think about Humpty Dumpty, I wonder why people tell kids that story. It's so sad. Maybe it's because they want to teach them at a young age that every action has a consequence. It may be good, but it may also be life altering, so much so, that the after effects of said action may even be irreversible.

If there was a way for me to learn that lesson in any other way, I'd wish for it, but it's not possible. What's done is done. It's definitely irreversible. There's no getting my parents back. And Drew. I don't know that we'd even recognize each other if we were to be lucky enough to be in each other's presence again. I do know that scenario runs through my mind every now and again.

Deciding to just leave my car here for a little bit, I walk around these streets...back to the house. It makes me sad to see how the homes have become old, tattered. Every one of them except ours. It's like it's always been. The yard is still beautifully maintained, but it's the same. The outside is the same. The vehicle is the same. I think we all tried to maintain what we had because the rate of change was too much for our hearts to take at the time. So we formed routines. We tried really hard to keep things simple. When what we were actually doing was surviving, not living.

It's why I had to go away after high school. I needed to find myself outside of this place. The summer of 1996 was not just the death of Tony and Felicia Hart. It was the death of Alex Hart as I knew her. When I had Drew, I thought I would recover, but when he left, it was like the final nail in my coffin.

So I have literally been putting one foot in front of the other. Taking it day-by-day. No, breath by breath, moment by moment. When I graduated, I had the grades to go anywhere for college, so I did. The hardest part of being away hasn't been the studying. It's been being away from Memaw and Papa.

Like my mother, I've always been pretty good at doing whatever I put my mind to, and so the way to continue my survival was by studying all the time. Applying for medical school was easier for me than it was my peers. More than my grades, my personality and story to helped.

As I get closer to the bottom of the hill, to the house I've called home since that tragic accident, the deciding factors for me to become a doctor flash before me. To have the ability to save lives as a profession was a no brainer. My family has been so proud and supportive of my career choice. The one choice they have not been supportive of was the decision to join the military to fund my education.

The conversation telling Memaw and Papa was one of the hardest I've ever had in my life. When the Army recruiter came to school one day for an assembly, he told us about the ROTC program. No matter how hard I tried to talk myself out of it, it just kept screaming at me. This is your chance, take it.

Knowing that if I had talked to Memaw or Papa about it first, that they'd talk me out of it, I went one day after school and signed up on my own. My heart speeds up, my hands begin to sweat at just the thought of that day.