10 Stories/10 Years: Story #1

Journal Entry February 1, 2000:

--- I'm in love. It's not like anything I've ever known. I want to marry him. I want to be with him for all eternity. I would follow him anywhere and that's that. I love him and I want no one else...

My roommates are placing bets on how long it is until we get married.---




The Meeting:

When it came time to decide which college I should go to I had my heart set on a small town Junior College called Snow. However, my brother and sister-in-law nagged me about making such an 'uninformed' decision and convinced me to go to a College Fair with a friend of mine.  I condescended to go but made a bee-line for the Snow College table barely glancing at any of the others.

Set up next to the table of choice was another, brighter, table for a school I had never heard of. The guy was friendly and explained that Dixie College (as it was called then) was located at the very South-West tip of Utah.

To say that my feelings in that moment were profound would be an understatement.

I instantly and unequivocally knew that Dixie was where I would go to school. With Snow promptly forgotten, I took all the needed paperwork and headed home with a new direction for my life.

That isn't to say I wasn't scared out of my mind... I tried to back out of moving several times before my family literally packed my car for me and I  in August of 1999 I found myself on that long and lonely stretch of I-15 that leads from Idaho to St. George, Utah.

When I pulled into my apartment complex and saw, for the first time, my life as an adult staring back at me I was overwhelmed with a sense of what might come. I couldn't get over all the possibilities of every person I met, perhaps this roommate will be a life long friend, maybe that girl will be someone who helps me if my car breaks down. Every person had meaning lingering in their countenance. My thoughts were stuck in this mode all day.

My parents helped unpack my bags then left for their respective hotels and I was alone with the first two of five roommates I would have.

I began unpacking and making niceties when their was a loud pounding on the door to our apartment. The girls smiled and opened it to a pack of rowdy guys in their early twenties.

My rommates introduced me one by one until finally pointing at a freckle faced guy in red shorts.

"This is Ralexwin." Em said.

"Hi." I smiled.

"Nice to meet you." He replied.

I was wearing a pink spaghetti strapped tank-top with butterflies on it and a pair of shorts.

The first thought I had about the polite guy I'd just met was 'I wonder if he's the guy I'll marry?'

Five minutes later I found out he was dating my roommate, Em.

Thirty minutes later I found myself in the car with them, third wheeling on their date to Vegas.
 
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