Dreams

Back on Day 1 of NaBloPoMo I asked for questions. Today is the last day that I have to answer Just Margaret's question.

Hmmm...a question? Tell us about what you thought your life would hold for you back in the day when you were 17. Dreams, aspirations, frustrations...

When I was 17 I really had few dreams. I was a cheerleader and highly social in high school, so even my plans for after graduation were nebulous at best.

I started my senior year planning on attending the University of New Mexico and getting a Deaf Education degree and teaching in an elementary school. Part of that dream was dropped when I visited the university later that year...I was used to college campuses looking like the University of Colorado: old brick buildings and big trees. UNM is NOT like that at all. Try 7 story industrial adobe for the library. It just didn't feel right.

I did know that I would go to college, though. Growing up it wasn't a question of if, it was where. That spring my mom visited friends in Knoxville and she came home raving about how beautiful it was, and that was that. I applied, got accepted, and committed to UT sight unseen. (Although I didn't stay there for even all of my freshman year, I don't regret the experience at all. Another post, another day.)

The biggest thing that I remember from that year is knowing how my love life would turn out. My parents had dated all through high school and I was convinced that the boy that I had loved (yet not actually dated,) all through school would magically fall in love with me and we would get married, move back to our hometown, and live happily ever after. Cute how innocent I was, eh?

That dream was shattered a couple of years later during my annual Christmas party. He was there on break from his big military academy. {Swoon!} We were able to catch up, which, of course, made my hopes soar. Also in attendance was a girl that I had been close friends with in junior high, who had gone to a private school for high school. My dreams were dashed when he asked me for her number, and if I thought that she would go out with him. Her? Really? (She was beautiful, by the way. Dammit.) He actually ended up marrying her a few years later. (And then getting divorced, which made me sad for them. I guess I had grown up by then.)

What I did know at 17 (or at least hope,) was that I wanted to be married to a fabulous man, (CHECK) and be able to be a stay-at-home mom, (CHECK).

So I guess my dreams weren't that far off after all.