Important Moments

There are things in my life that I remember like they happened yesterday, things that a song on the radio or a smell in the air bring back and it's like I'm living it all over again. Sometimes this is a great feeling and other times I have to blink back tears and force the ache in my chest to go away.

I'm pretty lucky in that I've never had anything all that traumatic happen in my life. My parents are still alive and married, I have an amazing family, a fabulous husband and friends I couldn't live without. That being said, there are a few pivotal moments in my life that had a significant effect on the person I am today. There are other events that are just as important, if not more so, but for whatever reason the memories are not as strong and they fade more every day. I find myself struggling to remember the details of having my boys, the details of how it felt to bring them home on the first day. My wedding day was perfect, I ended up being the Mrs I always wanted to be, yet so many of the details, so many of the things that I probably should remember, I just don't.
The things I do remember, the simple moments in my life that hit me out of nowhere while driving down the highway are things like the day my aunt picked me up from school. It was completely out of the normal and I knew in that instant without even asking that my Grandmother had passed away. I was 9 and she was my everything.

When I was in high school and met my now husband, I didn't know we'd end up married, I didn't know he'd be any more then a cute boy my best friend had a crush on but I knew he was different and sitting in my bedroom talking for hours, sometimes I can look at him and I'm back there all over again. I don't remember what we talked about, but I will never forget that feeling of just knowing something was different. He was different...different and everything I said I didn't want.

My freshman year of college I was at lunch with my cousin, my dad called to ask if I'd talked to my mom. I hadn't, but it was only mid-afternoon. I can't recall the words but I remember my heart racing, my head spinning and feeling as if I just wanted to cry but couldn't. My mom had left, she'd hopped in a car with a friend of hers and left, went to Florida. The rest is a blurr, I know at some point I talked to her and she was looking for a job, she was ready to move on...to leave us. The moment I remember clearly is sitting in my college dorm, on my top bunk and crying. Sobbing. Feeling completely and totally alone, feeling as if the one person in the world that was always supposed to be there for me...had just...left. My heart felt like it was broken in to a million pieces and I didn't want to make sense of it, I didn't want to understand. I'm not sure my relationship with my mom or with my best friend (and roommate at the time) has been the same. It's a time in my life that part of me wishes I could forget, wishes I could just erase but I can't. I go months and sometimes years forgetting all about it but then something happens, something triggers that memory and I'm back on that top bunk, totally alone.