Life's Journey - Part 2

So, if it's about making the journey your's, why did I drop out of college to get married one semester before completing my BA?

I think that everyone wants someone to love them. I think that is true! I think that we all have a need to be needed. Life isn't about being alone in it, I don't think. So my senior year in college, I was one year from being done and my boyfriend ended up being drafted into the army! He had gotten his BA in May of that year. In October, he was shipped off to basic training in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. In December of that year, we were married! He was terribly homesick. I loved the fact that he needed me! Everyone at school said,

"Don't do it! Finish school first. You will never come back if you stop now!"

His need for me was more powerful! In less than two months, I planned a wedding complete with sitdown dinner, flowers, and champagne! On January 1 of that year, I was a married lady living in a trailer outside of an army base! My mother never said it but I knew that she felt confirmed in the fact that girls don't need to go to college. They just end up getting married and having kids anyway!

I had gone from being independent of my mother to being dependent on a husband. We had only one car that he took daily to work unless I needed it to go to the laundramat. On those days, I would go to the PX for groceries and buy craft materials to fill my time in the trailer. Then one day, one of his army buddies said,

"Aren't you going to do anything besides sit in this trailer every day? Aren't
you going to get a job or something?"

After months of crafting everything I could with the craft talent that I had, I got a job as an educational assistant at an elementary school in Waynesville MO. We had moved to a different mobile home with neighbors who worked on base so the car was mine now every day.

Working at a school for that year only encouraged me to want to go back to finish what I had started with my college degree. Before our tour of duty with the army ended, I had reapplied to enter school again to student teach when we returned to Wisconsin. We had grown to like the extra money that a second income brought in and with one more semester, I could graduate with a degree and ability to find a job as a teacher.

I returned to Madison one month prior to Mike's return. We had found an apartment on a bus line so there was easy access to the school that I was assigned to for student teaching. For that one month, I went about doing the work that I needed to do but was anxious for Mike to join me. Infact, I was a little nervous and jealous of what he might be doing with a bunch of single guys back at Ft. Leonard Wood. I became worried that he would stop needing me now that his time in the army was almost done.