When Fates Collide - By The Wife

Being LDS, it would be nice to say that my husband and I met when we were in our twenties. He had just come home from a mission and I was doing very well at a singles ward where I was the Relief Society president. We met at a Church dance, had our first date on a hay ride, courted for a few months when he then proposed to me on temple grounds. We were married a few weeks later and everything has been sunshine, rainbows and baskets full of kittens ever since.

Course, it wasn't much like that.

In fact, it wasn't at all like that. I mean, we did eventually get married . . . and well . . . that's the only resemblance.

I was never the Relief Society President.

(Me at 14)

Truth is, we met young. I was 14 years old and enjoying what I thought would be a horrible year of High School. I moved to New Mexico the summer before my Freshman year, from California no less, leaving behind friends who would go on to forget all about me. I spent the summer inside watching Days of Our Lives with my Grandmother while my aunt and uncle (who we lived with) were off in Chicago visiting friends and family there. I didn't do much that summer and when the end of August rolled around, I dreaded the first day of school. I had lived with my aunt for almost five years now, and because of moving, I had gone through three schools already. Three first days, and each of them began the exact same way: she forgot something.

High School would be no difference other than the fact that the things she forgot was my shot record, which to this day we believe remained buried somewhere in the California house we left behind. So instead of making friends in my first class on my first day of High School, I was rushed down to a clinic where an old blue haired nurse smiled at me and stabbed me in the arm with what felt like liquid daggers. My aunt Paula then rushed me back up to school where they stamped "Accepted" on my forehead and ushered me off to class.

Because it took so long for me to get in, I was introduced in the middle of my second period class, and everyone was staring. I was big for my age, not so much fat, but a little top heavy, and my red face and red hair stuck out a little bit. I was sat down at a small table with two others who at the time, I didn't know would become my best friends.


Ernest, who I would eventually also label as my first boyfriend was from Texas and he sounded like it. His hair looked like he had worn a cowboy hat for most of his life but then decided that High School would allow him a new change, where baggy pants and shirts saying "Wazzup!" would make the rest of us believe he didn't grow up on the farm.

Our teacher, Mr. Wood-fookar (Yep, real name), put us into pairs and it was he that looked across our table and said, "Jessica meet your new partner, Molly." I looked across the table and was astonished by the beauty of the girl in front of me. She had gorgeous long brown hair and olive skin. But this was High School, which meant that because she was pretty, she was also a snobby cheerleader type. Boy was I wrong. "Dude," She said and leaned across the table. "This assignment is bull, wanna bail?"

It would be the first of many bailed classes and assignments. We were smart, and had good grades, but we liked to cause commotion far too much for our own good. We liked the rush of having people pissed off at us, and started something with them nearly every single day. Refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance was our crowning glory and it started a feud between students that lasted the whole semester long. We studied others, and found them to be less than worthy of us. Our friends were a mixture of people that in any other decade would have been tossed aside as outsiders. Drama thespians, art geeks, skateboarders and rockers. We were the elite, or at least Molly was, and I was her spunky little side kick.

Molly was a powerhouse. She walked with confidence that I could only dream of, and when she spoke, people listened. When she moved, boys followed her and I wanted that power. She was also infectious and just being around her I felt the power and confidence flow into me. I started fights if I felt like it instead of cowering in a corner like I had done throughout most of Jr High. I knew that she and our other friends would back us up no matter what, and we both had the ability to talk our ways out of anything. We were unstoppable. We were best friends and closer than sisters.

 We were so close in fact that at a concert downtown in Albuquerque, her boyfriend Dan at the time picked a fight with me in the parking lot, determined that she was more in love with me than she was him. I laughed of course and the two of us squared off front of the club where his friends tried to hold him back while Molly begged me not to kick him in his manhood. Of course that wasn't the highlight of the night. The true moment of interest was when our parents discovered where we were and we were both grounded for at least two weeks. It was easy to get through though. We were always getting in trouble.

The scene in the parking lot with Dan wasn't long lived. Their relationship ended because she had moved on to new horizons. I in the meantime had gone through a few boyfriends of my own. Ernest had become a good friend and he lived closer than Molly did so hanging out with him was quite easier since we were all fourteen years old and still lacking the ability and permission to drive. Because he was the only boy I really knew, it seemed obvious that we would date one another. I had never had a real boyfriend before, just small time crushes, but I felt that High School was my launching pad into a new life where maturity involved relationships and romance. I picked Ernest as the perfect specimen for a starter boyfriend.

He apparently thought differently. After a week I was taken aside and told that he only wanted to be friends with me. Come to find out, it was because he was secretly in love with Molly, and I was demolished. It would be the beginning of my true envy for her that would eventually start my life of happiness, but destroy our friendship forever.

While Molly finished off her relationship with Dan, I moved on to Stuart, Lance and then Eric. Small time moments of me trying to fill the void of self esteem that Ernest left me with when he claimed his love for my best friend. While I had originally planned to carefully pick my beaus, my lack of confidence and jealousy of Molly's sex appeal had me scratching the mold off the ponds surface and calling it boyfriend.

Lance was a swift replacement for Stuart who wounded me by his infidelity. High School is much like a soap opera. Everything is overly dramatic and you're certain that a broken heart will send you to your death that very night. I miss those days. It was much better than paying a car loan. Lance however didn't last, and neither did Eric who followed him. I was now on a mission. To be single! I didn't need some boy at my side to try and make me feel good about myself. Molly was now single and we were determined that men weren't apart of our new plan to get through the year. We were going to go see concerts, party all night and find spirituality and our true selves.

Of course, that was until early December when Molly rushed up to me during our lunch hour.  

"Oh dude, oh dude Jia," she said, calling me by my nickname. "I'm in love." She proclaimed with stars in her eyes that made me want to puke. She was ruining our plan! We were supposed to stay single! Enjoy life together as best friends, as sisters, and say screw men! And here she was proclaiming her undying love and devotion to what I figured was just the new flavor of the week. Of course Molly rarely used the word "love" without some serious reasons behind it.

"He's brilliant dude," She uttered through her mouth, the sunlight bouncing off of her braces, her one flaw. "He's so smart and funny, and he reads books like me and he's gorgeous." Molly's most recent boyfriend made me wonder if Molly understood what gorgeous meant. 

"We were talking about vampires today and everything he said was so profound. I really think I've found my intellectual match." She sighed, her level of happiness causing my lunch to rise from my stomach. 

"His name is Matt." She declared to me and the world as she fell back on the grass behind us and looked up at the sky.

"He's probably a an idiot." I replied bitterly. Hey, green is said to look pretty on redheads right?