My senior year of high school, I had a short term boyfriend I had met through some church friends. He told me God planned for us to marry. I thought he was belligerently nuts, I told him so that very night on the lake side. His name is fleeting to me at this very second, but he was sweet, funny, below my usual physical standard but willing to give me things I wanted at that moment in my life. He proposed on my birthday, in a church congregation of over 200 people. I accepted on stage to a thunderous applause and prying eyes. You see, I worked in this church, part time. I partied full time and played with kids in a church part time. Everyone there knew who I was and what I was about and yet I kept my job. CATON! over looked my "past" however. Caton, had no clue my past was still sometimes very much my present. My ring was beautiful and I wore it everywhere, I wore it with pride! I was marrying the future youth pastor of the biggest church in the far west valley. I was finally going to get my ever after, except my conscience gave in and I could not put a sweet, Christian man through my antics. I ended our engagement on a whim. I wanted to have sex and he didn't, he wanted to wait and I didn't.
I used this difference of opinion to end my lucky strike. The night I ended our engagement I threw my ring in his face and told him to fuck off. I got in my car, drove to the bank withdrew my whole account and took off to California! I called a girlfriend back in town to make me some hotel reservations online so I'd have somewhere to lay my head once I arrived 500 miles from home. I slept in a skanky dive my first night in Cali. I only slept two or three hours before I woke up and headed to the beach. I spent 8 days laying on the shore from morning till night. I watched my first sunset on the sea and met a Marine who spent 8 days in my hotel with me like we were an old married couple. He was on a two week vacation and didn't want to go home to Arkansas so we stayed together.
I meet some of the most random people in the most random places and they have always made for my greatest memories. His name was Chris and he was a MARINE! the amphibious kind, tall, dark, muscular and a little warped. He taught me to surf, played me guitar around a fire every night and we ate Panda Express for lunch everyday. I couldn't believe my luck, finding someone as great as him in a random city, without knowing a single soul. I think Chris was put there at that exact moment to keep me from going home and begging Caton for forgiveness. Chris had no idea the morning I up and left him in the hotel without so much as a phone number exchange, but he saved my life...he saved me from settling. I thank him in my dreams when I see him.