I remember the day my world as I knew it fell apart. It was my 19th birthday and my boyfriend of almost four years sent me a text ending our relationship. Images of our wedding we had planned to the day, of our small house on base while he finished his four years in the marines, and the mental picture of what our children would look like was flashed before my eyes and one by one went up in smoke. Through the next few months I muddled though school alone and finally made it to spring break. While home I was debating what I wanted to do with my life, I was in a major I didn’t like, and all together pretty miserable. That was until I decided to have lunch with one of my best friends from high school Brittany. It was an experience I would never forget and one that made my view of myself, and my small town world change. Back in high school Brittany was the popular girl, pretty, ambitious, fiercely independent, with a fashion sense that could blow Louis Vuitton out of the water. So when she announced she was going to attend the University of Central Missouri for their fashion program no one was surprised. Then about the time of graduation she met Jeff a small town sheriff deputy and they started dating but none of us saw it getting serious. I hadn’t seen or heard from her much since we left for college-mainly due to the fact that she thinks Facebook and twitter are an invasion of privacy-so I didn’t know what she was up to until we met in town at the restaurant we both use to work at. I was excited to hear how fashion school was and if Jeff and her were even still dating since Brittany normally went through boys like Kleenex, but what came out of her mouth sent me reeling. She had dropped out of fashion school in order to move in with Jeff out in the middle of the country, she was waitressing part time at a local place and they were planning on getting married in the summer and soon starting a family. As I sat in those familiar solid oak benches surrounded by the wafting aroma of cheese burgers I was staggering to understand this new reality. As I listened to her stunned she told tales of redecorating Jeff’s trailer, and how they had gotten a puppy together, I started to realize that two emotions were rapidly growing inside me. One was anger at her for throwing her life away for some hick country boy, and the other was a staggering overwhelming realization that we had just switched places. When I left high school I had a military boyfriend who wanted me to do the college thing for a semester and then come out to live with him, get married, and quickly start a family, and at the time that was also what I wanted. Then after a semester as I thought of what was to come over Christmas break I couldn’t explain it but married life a part time job and children just wasn’t appealing to me anymore, in fact it kind of completely terrified me. So when I finally said I was staying at college he broke it off stating he couldn’t date someone who would make more money or have a higher degree of education then him. Now sitting across the table was my best friend who was exactly where I was supposed to be at this time making a home and a small town life for herself, and I wanted no part in it, I actually was angry about what she was doing with her life. I left our lunch in a state of confusion and a cloud of mixed emotions, all my life I had been surrounded by couples that were high sch