Decisions
My boyfriend and I had only been dating for two months when I was scheduled to leave for a three-week study abroad program with my college. The night before I was scheduled to leave, he and I went to see The Family Man at the movie theater. In the movie, the main character sees how his life would have been different if he had not gone on a trip to another country for a job opportunity. Because he decided to go on the business trip, the main character did not marry his girlfriend nor have children, but remained a lonely bachelor and work-aholic.
The next day, my mother, grandmother, and boyfriend drove me to the airport. I cried and said that I did not want to go on the trip—all I could think about was the movie. The study-abroad program that I had been looking forward to for six months no longer seemed important. At the airport, I saw all the other students lined up to check-in their luggage. I refused to get out of the vehicle.
During the month that I should have been in another country, I had a car accident that left me unharmed, but was close to taking my life. I was driving down a little country road, unbeknownst to me this road was icy. When I turned the steering wheel, my car did not obey. My front wheels slid into the ditch and my car continued to slide along the road. The passenger side of my car collided with an electric pole. My car swung around and snapped the electric pole. It would have landed on my car, crushing me, except that it became caught in telephone wires and hung two feet above my car.
My boyfriend came to pick me up and then took me to the hospital the next day to be examined for injuries and retrieve medication for my back spasms. During this time of recovery and loss of independence without a car, my boyfriend cared for my emotional and physical pains.
If I had gone on the study-abroad trip, these events would never have happened and we might never have grown so close. We could have separated in life as the main character in the movie. My boyfriend, who is now my husband, has become my best friend, and I am glad that I chose to be with him.