The year was 2005ish and I was almost twenty. I was flying down a backroad outside of my stereotypical small-town hometown. Windows down, sunroof open, Miranda Lambert’s “Kerosene” on repeat blasting so loudly from the speakers of my Rally Red Honda Civic that I could literally feel every drum beat through the steering wheel onto my fingers. I was mad as a wet hen; I couldn’t see straight.
I had no business driving, but the only cure I had at that point in time was to get as far away from town as I possibly could, with only Miranda riding shotgun. I came around a curve and squinted my eyes as a flock of…something was passing just ahead of me. Assuming they were buzzards and would fly off as I quickly gained on them, I didn’t really slow down. Within seconds I realized that in fact, the flock of buzzards roughly a few feet in front of my hood was not a flock of buzzards.
They were turkeys.
I dropped out of Girl Scouts after a year in elementary school when I realized we didn’t get unlimited access to Samoas year-round, so I wasn’t sure if turkeys could fly. If you even learn shit like that in Girl Scouts. Perhaps I should take a minute to Google that. Sadly, it didn’t really matter if they could take flight or not because in the next two seconds—WHOOSH! The only bird left in the road was part of one that wasn’t hanging off the end of my hood.
Oh shhhhhit. I had just had a head-on collision with a TURKEY. There were feathers flying up my windshield and I was trying not to hyperventilate over being in an accident. I mean, technically this was an accident. Right? I slowed down significantly, but I freaked myself out from actually stopping to check my car. What if the thing was still alive and attacked me when I tried to help it out of my grill? I knew the little fella would be pissed. Do turkeys peck? Do they even have beaks? I’m such a phoney. Ain’t no way I’m a country girl. A country girl would know about turkeys flying…and their beaks. Or lack of. WHATEVER.
I rolled up my windows (along with my big girl pants) and came to a rolling stop on the side of the road. My eyes started to tear up and my nose started to burn. I will NOT cry. I will NOT cry. Instead, I started to giggle. You know, that crazy-lady, hysterical giggle that happens to a person right before they Britney Spears? ←It’s okay to use this as a verb now, right? Water started to trickle down one side of my face and I started wiping my hands across my cheeks.
Stop it! STAHHHHP it! YOU are better than this.
You see, just that morning I left home on my way to a class at the community college I was enrolled at. The same community college that I enrolled in to be closer to home, or letsbehonest, closer to the boyfriend I had had for four years. The boyfriend who had the potential to be everything I’d ever wish for in a cheesy love story-type boyfriend.
I’ve been reading romance novels since elementary school when I used to lay on my Mama’s pillow at night and lean over her shoulder when she turned away to read the “good parts”. When you’re a teenager whose whole life revolved around having her own love story in real-life, just like the ones I’d gotten so caught up in for most of my adolescence, your first love is literally like a dream come true.
I had found a significant other. But as it seems, he was just an ‘other’ who was significantly cheating on me with someone older who should’ve had more sense. My world had come to a harsh reality in the few weeks leading up to our tragic breakup. Tragic for me, at least. I’d been dealing with my anger, hurt, and desperation very privately. I hadn’t acted out or planned to light anything on fire.
Wait, I’m lying.
I did have a plan to light things on fire. It was well-planned and supremely premeditated. I just didn’t have the balls to actually do it. I kept to myself and tried to be the classier person. That is, until that morning when I was on my way to class and saw his truck parked at her house. It’s one thing to learn about somebody cheating, yet it’s a whole other ballgame when you see it. I could handle being cheated on. Somewhat. Not really. But now you have a public relationship with her?
And I have to SEE IT?!
I made it to my class—God knows how. I don’t even remember getting there. I do remember walking in and realizing I had a calculus test. A test that could quite potentially make me vomit. I had too much pride to admit to my classmates and to the professor that I needed help. So I took the dang test. And I failed it, spectacularly.
I felt like utter crap. I walked back to my car, jacked up the volume, and proceeded home to face whatever horrible sour lemons my current shit-storm of a life was going to throw at me next.
Why was this happening to me?!
The life I had so meticulously planned out was currently twisting and winding down the drain. I was newly single, whether I wanted to be or not. I had just failed a test that was a major part of the grade I needed to pass the class I desperately needed before transferring to a teacher-prep program with the rest of my clique. And apparently I was going to have to file a claim on my parents’ insurance because there was NO way with the force I hit Tom Turkey that my car wasn’t messed up.
Tears started to back up in my eyes so I squeezed them shut. My throat started throbbing with that pain you get from holding your emotions back. My skin felt like it had glass shards digging into it. I was breaking out.
Like I was allergic to something.
I started to give myself a motivational speech. If Life is going to treat me this way, I’m going to make it realllly hard and throw it back in its face that I handle this. I can freaking handle this!
I raced home in that car and I came up with a plan. I wasn’t going to be the girl who let this nonsense destroy her. I would rise above it.
And here, eleven years later, I’m handling life really well. Except for when I don’t.
This blog is a collection of stories at just how well Life and I have “gone at it” since that morning where I had an epiphany over the Great Turkey Massacre. Time and time again where I’ve had...allergic reactions...to impossible situations and learned the pill to curing them.
There are stories of overcoming new adulthood & meeting my One. There are stories of recurrent miscarriages & all the goodies involved in trying to conceive, keep, and birth babies. And most currently, stories of raising (barely) a baby human that can now do...stuff.
Some of them are not pretty.
Some of them I am not proud of.
But they are mine.
Turkey feathers and all. 
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