life changes

every person has moments in their lives where something clicks, or shifts and they go through change. i have had several life changing moments in my few short 18 years. but none like the one last night.

its one of those personal life changes that only effect me and who i am as a person.

i went back to the very site that changed who i am and who i have been. i went back to where it all started. everything changed from the moment the car hit that area on the side of the very road i walked on last night. i have not been back to the area of my moms death in almost 14 years. (it will be 14 years june 23) i have not been inside the house that i lived in, in almost 10 years until last night. i took joey with me for safety reasons, but trust me i would have rather been alone through this. we drove down the road where my dad said to go...even though i totally got lost....and parked. i walked along the road holding his hand, unsure of how far to walk. but walked a little ways then turned around. got back in my car and drove down the road towards the freeway like she would have been doing that night. then i turned my car around to go back to my house, and drove the direction that the other family was driving, the ones that hit her when she lost control. it was something i needed to do. joey may not have understood it, but he kept me smiling rather then crying most of the night.

i went past my house and noticed someone living there, i parked the car and dragged joey along. i knocked on the door twice and this old dude answered the door. i explained that i used to live there and i wanted to see the inside of the house. he asked me a few questions relating to who my parents were. and he allowed me and joey to go inside. there wasn't much to look at, but it was weird to stand in the house again. i walked into the kitchen and saw the area where there used to be a kitchen table where i sat right after i got the dent in my forehead. i walked the hallway towards my room, that so many nights i ran crying down because i was in trouble. i opened the door that i used to slam all the time to my room, looked inside and started crying. i turned around to see the bathroom that me and my sister shared, where i was potty trained and everything else. i walked to the master bedroom, where i remember so many nights and mornings after my mom was killed that i would go run and jump onto my dads water bed and play hide and go seek under the covers with him. we walked outside, and seeing the dirt and the damage that happened to the backyard after remembering that it was so pretty and green was hard. as i was crying the poor old dude felt bad. joey held my hand for a few minutes but i mostly stood on my own. i stared out onto the backyard and thought about everything that happened there. the wedding that made us move out to murrieta, the horses that we owned, the animals that used to live back there. so many adventures through the "lava" and playing with our neighbors who we still talk to now.

i finally got closure on some things, i saw where my mom was killed. now it totally doesn't look like what it did 14 years ago, but thats progress in life. it was something i needed to do, and i am glad that i did it. it has been a hard journey the last few years without her and i needed to face my fears.

another change, not in life but of mind and heart happened today. i realized that when i say "i love you" out of joking to joey, it has never been close to a romantic type of love. but i do care for him a lot. and love him to pieces because we have been through a lot in the last 3 months. and he is one of the few people that if God decides to take from my life then He better have a damn good reason for taking him out because joey has made my life better. he has made me think about me as a person and not so much about our relationship. he has been supportive when i need him to be, and he has been a goof ball when i need cheering up. and i hope that when we go our different paths and if that leads to an end of our relationship that it ends well and we still can talk. and i know that i say this about every boy but he is the only one that i truely truely have had a life change because of and i mean that i don't want to lose as a friend.

he has reminded me that love does exist, but my thoughts of love have been so twisted and screwed up that i need to start over. God has used him to remind me that love isn't always about butterflies and rainbows, but its about caring for people, and being there to support them in their darkest times.

when i say "i love you" to someone, it no longer will have the connotation of romantic fantasy, but that i care for them, and will be there for them as support. maybe one day God will allow me to re-see romantic love when He feels that I am ready to deal with that, but as of now, i think He is showing me how to love some one. without the butterflies and rainbows.