California

In the last week of August of 1998, I was driving to class at law school, and was stopped at a light.  As I sat there waiting for the light to turn green, I was swamped with an overwhelming wave of misery.

I was a week into law school and had an inkling that law school was full of people much smarter than I.  I was in my seventh year of an unhappy dating relationship. I had moved home and back into my childhood bedroom, just as every independent woman dreams of doing.  I had applied to three dream law schools in California, been wait-listed at two of them, and outright rejected from my please-oh-please-please-please-accept-me school, and was instead attending a much cheaper in-state law school less than ten minutes from my parents' house.

As I sat at that light, grumpily contemplating my life, the song "Ready to Run" by the Dixie Chicks came on.  At that moment my heart rebelled.  DRIVE, YOU IDIOT, it said, just drive the hell on up out of here.  Get out of Dodge.  Just go, go, go--GO ANYWHERE BUT HERE.  LEAVE NOW.  Keep driving till you hit California and figure it out when you get there.

I still think of that moment every time I hear that song, even now, nearly fourteen years later.

My follow-the-rules body ignored my rebellious heart and kept on driving to Torts class. I made my way to the private parking lot on the edge of campus where I had bought a parking spot for the school year, and parked at the very end in my assigned spot.  As I got out of my car, a giant blue Buick roared through the gate and swung into the spot two cars down from mine.  A cute boy got out, swung his bookbag onto his back, adjusted his earphones into his Walkman (dude, it was 1998), and he headed off across campus, without once ever looking my way.

Five years later I married that cute guy who ignored me.

But at that moment, that hot summer day in 1998, I had no idea that a piece of my future had just shifted into place.  Not an inkling that that day's unhappiness would one day be replaced by love and laughter that was walking in front of me in size 11 shoes.

Now we live in northern New Jersey, and I no longer want to keep driving to California.  My fondest wish is to move back to south Jersey, the very shackles I so desperately wanted to flee fourteen years ago.

Of course, since the universe has a perverse sense of humor, we are moving to California. Maybe the universe heard me fourteen years ago and set this whole plot in motion as a way of delivering me to California when I was finally ready.  I trust it will work out just as awesome as the last time I wanted one thing but got something else.