As I write this I wonder what pathways, as in memories, have been planted and paved incorrectly in my mind. Now at age fifty, I’m very aware that our perceptions of things we experience is our own virtual reality of sorts. I told myself the basic reason I moved out of my parents house at such a young seventeen, was because they told me I had to anyway by the day I turned eighteen. So, I took that to mean they wanted me out on my own working and supporting myself. I created a story in my mind that it meant I had to set up my life plan in full. I moved out with my boyfriend Ricky, never mind neither one of us was ready for that.

The whole plan was my idea, as I was convinced we could make it on our own, if we put our resources together. I never really considered there was much that could go wrong. As the first couple of months in the apartment, I started developing some pretty serious stomach issues. I chalked it up to all of the rich pasta dinners and Pillsbury pop up bread loaves we were eating. In addition to the stomach aches I was having some pretty intense dreams. In my dream I saw my boyfriend making love with someone in his car, at first it was just like flashes. I kept silent for weeks after having the dream a couple of times it started to creep me out because during the day I would have flashes of it repeatedly.

Sometimes at night I would wake up being flooded by memories from the past years and our relationship. He was my high school boyfriend, we’d met at a restaurant where he was a dishwasher and I was a waitress. He had lived across town when we first started dating, but his family ended up moving closer to us my last year of high school. In the night I would retrace the steps of those years and months we were dating before we lived together, looking for holes in his stories. There was really only one night that stuck out vividly in my mind. This was one night where I remember thinking his story just didn’t “add up”. He told me he’s been out with a buddy driving around and lost track of time. It had been a Friday night and I remember specifically because the next day I had to be a beauty school, it was a Saturday. I remember waiting that Friday night all dressed up for him to pick me up, but he never showed. We were supposed to go see a movie downtown in Sonoma Square. I tried calling and his home answering machine picked up, after leaving a message I waited and eventually gave up.

The next morning on my way to beauty school I asked my dad to drive past his house to see if his car was there, and it was. I was distracted all the way down the highway to Napa. My dad used to wait for me on Saturday sleeping in the car so I can clock my hours in and get my certification completed before I got my high school diploma. During lunch I called my boyfriend from the payphone in the beauty school break room. Many of the older students were milling about in earshot as I listened to him tell a story about how he drove around with his friend the night before, losing track of time. I turned to my friends and answer their questions about his weak explanation. No one seem to believe him as easily as I did since half the people even at the next table were chuckling as they listened in to his lame excuse. Well that sat with me, right in the back of my mind for years.

Now here I was laying awake at night, struggling with stomach aches, feeling like my boyfriend of three years was being dishonest with me. I could feel it deep in my gut, like a nagging feeling that told me I had to get answers. Still the question remained from this nagging mystery, was that the only night in question? I had to get to the truth I just didn’t know how. I begin to agonize over a plan for a couple of weeks. I wasn’t even sure, if I did discover he was a liar, how I would proceed. Finally one morning I woke to the worst stomach pain I had ever experienced in my life. I couldn’t even move from the couch and I remember crawling to the phone to call my mom who came and got me and took me to the hospital.

At the hospital the doctors thought that my appendix possibly was rupturing. But there was no other signs except the pain. Still they prepped me for surgery as I lie they’re crying my mom soothing me as it started to pass. I shared with her my dreams and flashes and the pain began to subside. It felt like a miracle as it turned out it was just severe gas from stress and food allergies I’d not yet detected. Although not going under the knife was a huge relief, it was all a big giant scare and I knew I needed to do something to relieve this anxiety, and get to the truth.

I devised a plan to get him to confess by telling him I already knew he had a secret. The nagging feelings are so strong about the event and I had flashes of him in a dark place down a dark road and there was only one place I knew if that was like that. It was one summer he had taken me there, earlier on in high school. I remember him mentioning that his stepsister had shown him the place.

I ran my plan by my past favorite instructor from beauty school. He was flaming gay and one of my closest and favorite people at that time in my life to go to for advice. He told me “a man will never confess unless he thinks he’s already been caught.” He loved my idea of tricking him into the confession. Finally the day came and I knew I had to pounce. I must beat him home from work, to really throw him off guard. When I got there he was already home. I remember his clothes were left in a pile by the front door where he always took them off due to the nasty particles he was covered, in from his career as a insulation installer.

I set the stage to put my plan in motion. Poured myself a beer, took a seat on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter and waited for him to come out of the steamy bathroom. The truth was there was only one person who kept coming up in my mind repeatedly in connection with the mystery night and that was his stepsister, the one who had shown him down that seedy driveway, that led to the X-rated movie theater in Marin. You see that’s the place that kept popping up in my mind over and over again. He took me there years before I can still remember flashes of the half naked cowboy making love on the screen. I can see him driving, in my mind, her sitting next to him in the car. As they headed down that long dark driveway. Large screens in the distance, rounding the corner, a giant set of naked breasts being caressed by rugged hands. Flash there it was the same images would repeat in my mind over and over, my heart was racing.

Before I could take a second sip of courage from my beer, I had to react quickly when I saw his shadow appearing from the hallway. I immediately blasted with a story of how I’d run into his stepsister while I was working at the mall that day. “Funny thing,” I told him “she apologized to me, but didn’t say what it was about. She told me you would explain what it was about.” Confused and flabbergasted he shook his head like water was stuck in his ears from the shower he probably wished he’d never stepped out of. Before I knew it was coming out of my mouth I blurred it out “she told me it had something to do with you and she visiting the x-rated Drive In?”

I reminded him that he had once told me that she showed him that place and reminded him how he took me there years before. He actually shrunk, as if all the air had left his body. I knew it had been a dead spot on recollection of some very untidy events. I could see it written all over his face, he was guilty as sin. I didn’t have to say another word, before he admitted the drive-in visit with her, but tried to play it off like it was innocent. Just he and his stepsister sharing a couple of beers in the late night, losing track of time. It was the very Friday night I had remembered him not showing up. Chills went through my body and I remember thinking the angels were trying to give me a sign to get away from him. Suddenly the stomach aches made so much sense I was not meant to be here with him.

I had nothing to lose, so I pushed further remembering he also once took me to an old apartment he lived in with his mom before he moved into our neighborhood. I proceeded to add more details to the story from the random blue sky it seemed. I blurted out that it wasn’t the only place he took her but that she had told me he took her to the apartment too. He stood there blank, it was all I needed to send shivers through my body! He confessed having sex with her twice that night, once in the car which was a fail so they went back to the old vacant apartment he still had the key to.

I jumped from my seat, backing away from him I recall picking up a barstool and holding it between us. I remember crying and yelling at him hysterically to stay away from me. I told him I had never run into his step sister in the mall that day and that I believed it was a sign from God for me to get away from him. He tried telling me a whole sob story about how he’d been struggling with father issues and had gotten caught up doing drugs behind my back. He made some bad decisions and he never wanted me to know about it.

I left that day and moved in with my sister But kept in contact with him because I still cared about him. I still thought he could change and that maybe he would spend the rest of his life making it up to me. Truthfully it sounded like having a good leg up on him might be a good way to start a marriage, him spending the rest of our life making amends. I can’t even believe that that was the kind of thoughts that would come across my mind at that time in my life. I really had no real solid guidance with regards to my relationships growing up to that point.

Moving on eventually got easier and I started to find a focus on what I wanted to do with my life and knew that it didn’t include being a wife or a mother just yet. My sister was a great roommate but I had to grow wings, I knew I wanted to fly. It was time for me to move to the big city of Los Angeles. Truth is I was already in love again when I left my home turf and headed to follow my dreams. I had met a dreamy guy while visiting the city. I was very connected to my intuition after the incident with my past relationship and so I believed I would always be divinely guided if I remembered to listen to my gut and let it lead the way.

When I look back at this story and these life changing events I can’t help but feet like I was given a gift, a second chance at life. A chance to change my course and get back on my right path again. Knowing that we all have a very strong power to connect to truth gives me the courage to go on and trust in love again. And although it hasn’t been perfect and I’ve gone through other break ups, I’ve always trusted my gut to guide me. My sixth sense is my inner beings knowing and I do believe we always have the answers inside of us, each and everyone of us do. Sometimes we just have to be silent enough to listen.

If you have something nagging at you, maybe it’s time you take a look at it… just maybe there’s a truth that needs to be revealed or something you need to face. The truth will set you free. monixo