For almost a decade it was my secret-but-not-secret dream, my way out, my cherished talisman that I wrapped myself around in the dark when I was terrified. I was eleven the first time I made a believable promise to myself that one day I would leave. (I had dreamed of running away and living like a hermit in the wilderness for five years already, but those schemes involved living in caves or on deserted islands and I had no path or roadmap to follow to make them happen.)
I had finally stood up for myself, and in the resulting chaos I left the house without permission, and without telling anyone where I was going. I walked aimlessly around the streets of the small town where we lived for hours. I walked past the library, past the small store, wandered the neighborhoods, hung out on the empty and deserted fairgrounds. I wanted to never go back. I wanted to run away, but I was too afraid (realistic?). I had literally nothing: no snacks, not a change of clothes, not a book, not even a pencil. I couldn't think of anywhere to turn, anyone that might help me. I couldn't figure out how to earn money, where I would sleep, how I would eat. Finally, after sunset, I gave up. I wandered back home but I promised myself that I would Get. Out. Teachers had promised me that I was smart, that I could earn something magical called "scholarships" and I was going to do it. Someday, somehow, I would go to college.
When I let myself back into our house, things were calm and quiet. The earlier threats and explosions of anger were ignored. The whole series of events became yet another thing that We Do Not Talk About. It probably would have made me crazy, but the barn door had been left open and that horse had run away years before.
So, throughout the tumultuous teenage angst that followed: bullying by my peers, my budding sexuality (and poor choices of partners / situations), the inevitable questioning of my religion, emotional estrangement from my mother, and my father's death, the idea of escape to college became firmly cemented in my mind as the Only Way Out. As I got older in school and kept getting good grades, participating in extra curricular activities that I could use on applications, I realized that not only was I going to escape, but I wouldn't be judged! In fact, I was celebrated. I was going to be the first person in my family not only to graduate high school, but to go to college.
The latter half of my junior year and my entire senior year were filled with ACT testing, retesting, college visits, research, planning, financial aid applications, and DECISIONS! Where would I go? What would I study? Ironically, I put almost no thought into a major. College was an escape from abuse and nothing more. "Going To College" was an end goal in itself. I put no more thought into what I would do once I got there than I put into what I would do once I got to heaven. It was the acceptance and arrival that was important in each case. What one would do there seemed irrelevant, irreverent.
By the summer after graduation, things were more or less settled. I had decided on a college. It was in state, for the cheaper tuition, but it was the more liberal, more cerebral college. Not the agricultural college that most of the other (few!) students who were going on to college had chosen. I had financial aid in order, housing had been applied for, and I had been accepted. Now it was just a matter of waiting. I had a part time job for the summer, and I had my first vehicle (purchased with my own money!) a little Honda Spree. I remember fondly zipping up and down the back roads to do whatever I wanted: buy pizza, go to a movie, play D&D with friends from church, and stargaze.
There was one complication: I had a boyfriend. Not a creepy, older guy that I snuck out and had illicit sex with. Nope, a real, legit boyfriend. A boyfriend that my mother adored. He did not want me to go to college. He drove by a small house in my hometown that was for sale, and he wanted us to buy it. We could get married, he said. I wouldn't need college, he said. He would work and support us. I would stay home. We would have babies. On the weekends we would work on the lawn. We could go to the church I grew up attending. And we could support my mom in her old age. It would be wonderful.
"Are you insane?" I kept asking him. I'm not doing that. I am going to college. Come with me. Move away. Eventually we hashed it out every possible way and I realized that there was no compromise, so I broke up with him. I tried to give him his class ring. He wouldn't take it. He promised to wait for me. I said "Don't do that." He said that I would "get it out of my system" and when I came back, realizing that the outside world just wasn't all that and a bag of chips, he would still be there waiting for me. He let me out at my house, and I threw his ring into the car just before he drove away. He slammed on the brakes, found the ring, held it out to me for a long time, and when I refused to take it, he dropped it in the driveway and drove away.
Eventually I picked up the ring, carried it inside and gave it to my mom. I asked her to give it back to him when he calmed down. She called me every kind of idiot and told me that no one would ever be as good to me as he was and that I was making a terrible mistake. I stomped into my room yelling and just before I slammed the door, I said "If you think he's so great, YOU marry him! I am going to college!"
Three weeks before I was supposed to move into the dorms, I came home from my job. I stepped into our living room, and I froze in place. There sitting in our threadbare, hardscrabble, ugly little living room, in the space where the ugly, second-hand, out of tune and impossible to keep tuned black upright piano with broken keys had sat, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen:
Why did you get me a piano now? What will I do with it? Where will I keep it? Where did you get the money to buy this?
Because I always promised you one when you were little, but we could never afford it and I didn't want you to move away from home knowing that I'd not kept my promise. Well, you can't take it to college, obviously. I'll keep it safe here for you. I used the money we saved for you for college to buy it.
You what? You did not. You WHAT??
And then The Boyfriend showed up. The Boyfriend showed up in a pretty little candy apple red Mustang with a white interior. I just bought it he said. It's not finished yet he said. But I bought it for you. I'll totally restore it, and it'll be just yours. You can use it to commute to the junior college in Seminole. He had already put a down payment on the house on the corner. We'll put your new piano in the living room. We'll get married. We'll be happy.
They sent me to talk to my pastor. He was happy to give me his time.
You have always been too smart for your own good, he said. The devil has always had an easy way to deceive you, by making you rely on your own understanding he said. You need to stop being so arrogant. You need to stop putting yourself in harm's way by thinking too much. You cannot go to college, he said. I was on his playing field, so I played by his rules. I got out my bible. I turned to the book of Romans, chapter 1.
"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,his eternal power and G-dhead; so that they are without excuse:" I said "See? It says here that G-d's truth is revealed in his creation. And I laid out my only original theology for him. I said "Truth cannot contradict truth. If G-d has made revealed truth available in the scriptures, and has made revealed truth available through what we can observe, then those two things cannot contradict each other. If they temporarily appear to, then we are misunderstanding one, the other, or both of them." He shook his head sadly and he said he was very worried about me, that he was afraid I was taking a first step on the road that would lead to destruction.
He said that if I persisted in my arrogance, I would fall in with a bad crowd. The world was an evil, dangerous place, and of course Satan was prowling about looking for fools who thought they were wise in order to deceive them. I would lose my faith, and I would end up burning forever in hell. He said "I hope and pray that you change your ways."
I said the only thing I could think of by then, my mantra, the only thing that would save me. I said "I am going to college."
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