The Summer That Changed Everything

I looked at the ring on my finger. It was small, but that didn't matter to me. It was hot outside, but the sun was shining and the birds were singing despite the storm I felt in my heart. He had postponed the wedding...again. This time it was because he didn't like the venue we had picked out. He said that it felt more like my mother had picked out the venue. It was true that my mother had helped with quite a bit concerning the wedding. After all, I'm only 19 years old, and she knows more about weddings and social gatherings than I do, but this feels like a sign to me. I mean, how many times can one have something come up with planning a wedding and it not be a sign? The first time, it was the pastor who canceled. Then, my fiancé postponed it because he thought we didn't have enough money in the bank, and now this. I know we're young, but I love him with all my heart, and we've been together almost 5 years already. I want to be married, have children, and be settled. After all, that is what I've been taught and raised to do my entire life. When you are a girl and you live in the Deep South, you're expected to grow up, get married, and have babies right out of high school. I felt so uncertain now and sick to my stomach, so I turned out the lights and tried to get some sleep. It was a restless sleep; I tossed and turned all night. What did I want to do with my life right now if not marry the love of my life? I could go to college. I was planning on doing that anyway, as I want to be a teacher. However, if I weren't getting married, I could live the full college experience. That would please my mother and my stepfather. I could travel, maybe. I could go wherever I want to, and then I wouldn't have to face all these people asking me why I'm not married yet. The questions and assumptions are relentless in a small town. I could stay here with my grandma for a while longer and try to figure things out. Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Before I knew it, a couple of weeks had passed, a couple of boring weeks. I worked at my uncle's grocery store, where I had to answer questions about why my June wedding hadn't happened yet, and it was almost July. Why did this wedding keep getting postponed? I kept getting comments about how I didn't need to be married anyway because I was too young, or the opposite end of the spectrum, that I better hurry and get married before that boy runs off. I had spent most of my life with a controlling mother who nothing was ever good enough for and then this small town life where you had to live up to these impossible standards. I just wanted to find my way, be myself in this world instead of having someone tell me who I was supposed to be. I wanted to make my own decisions, and I was mad because I wanted my fiancé to be the first decision. He was supposed to be my "suck it" to everyone. This summer was not turning out the way it should have. My fiancé and I were still together, but I am starting to realize that he's not going to be my "suck it" to everyone. He's not going to be my "I'm going to do what I want and you can't stop me." And after some thought, maybe that's okay because after all, maybe that's not such a good reason to get married after all. I mean, I do love him, too, of course, but mostly, I wanted to get married this young to prove to everyone that we could make it. Then, one day, a recruiter from the Army Reserves came into my Uncle's grocery store. Sure, I'd seen several in my senior year of high school, but this one was different. This was a woman, and she looked like a badass in her uniform. She was in her dress uniform, which she called her "dress greens," and I was struck by the way she carried herself and the hard lines on her face that gave way to softness as she handed a child back his candy he had dropped while she waited in line. I felt like living with my mother growing up; I had already been through a war of sorts, and it struck me that this would be another way to stick it to people and do something that women usually didn't do. Also, a way to find myself, perhaps? I helped her to her car with her groceries, even though she didn't need it, and I talked her ear off with questions for the next 15 minutes. She was in her early 30s, as it turned out, and had been to Iraq. She caught some shrapnel from an IED and had to be put on a light-duty job, so she was a recruiter. She explained to me how I could get my college degree while serving in the military, and the military would pay for it. She handed me her card and told me if I had any questions to call her. When I spoke to my fiancé that night, he told me how he had thought about joining the military too. He didn't know if it'd be the right move for him, though. After some coaxing, I convinced him, and the next day we went to the recruiter's office together. The same recruiter that I'd seen the day before was there. She was honest about the hardships she'd seen, how hard it was to carry all the equipment on your back through the heat, then she shared how much the Army had given her a sense of purpose and a way to find herself outside of her family. As she put it, when you aren't allowed to have anything and you're left to start anew with just your military comrades, you learn not only your strength but what you're made of inside. When you are in certain situations and you respond, you learn a new thing about yourself every time. Whether good or bad, you learn. I didn't need to hear anymore. I signed the papers, and my fiancé followed suit. We walked out of that recruiter's office with a brand new future in our sights. On the way back home, riding in the passenger seat, I looked at my engagement ring once more. I didn't know when or if we would still be getting married, but somehow that didn't matter so much anymore. I was about to put myself to the test in ways I had never imagined before, and I would always love him no matter what.