was not at all how I thought everything was going to turn out. Just a day ago, I was planning on spending the rest of my life with Tyler.
Now? Now I find myself back in dreary and wet Pittsburgh with low hanging clouds that seem to extinguish any possibility of hope.
Of course, I don't have to stay here if I don't want to.
Where would I go? Besides, I have my mortgage, I have my job, and I have my student loans to pay off.
As we take the bus to the rental car stand, I wonder if this was always going to be the way it was going to turn out.
My life with Tyler was full of drama, suspense, and danger, a lot more than I ever bargained for. Maybe this is the way that it was always going to be.
I'm not someone who is much of a risk taker and running away with an escaped convict is not exactly in my repertoire.
Mom keeps trying to talk to me. She tries to talk to me at baggage claim, she keeps talking on the bus, and even after I get the keys to the rental car.
Finally, I turn around and tell her that I'm not listening. I thought it was obvious, but I guess not.
The drive from the airport to my house follows a long four lane highway with traffic jammed in both directions. The roads here are carved into mountains and into old settlements going back to the 1700s. Of course, they have been updated, but there isn't the luxury of six lane freeways like I have seen in the West.
I've always enjoyed older houses steeped with history but driving past them now makes me feel nothing but sorrow. Pittsburgh is my home, but I don't want it to be anymore.
Tyler was right. I just got stuck here.
It was where we grew up and it was the place that I always wanted to leave to make my mark on the world. Other people are plenty happy here. I know that now.
I didn't always know that. I'm not. When I got out West, the abundance of nature and the wildness of the land spoke to me. There are people living right next door to coyotes, mountain lions, and bears. I want that.
When we get to my cul-de-sac, my mother's eyes grow wide.
“This is where you live?” she asks. I pull up and park in my driveway.
“Oh my God, Isabelle. This house is… magnificent.”
I nod my head trying to see this place through her eyes. I grew up in a number of apartments throughout Sharpsburg and Cheswick, the poor white areas in the Fox Chapel school district.
The apartments were always drafty in the winter and hot in the summer. The air conditioning consisted of window units that could not keep up with the sticky humidity of the Appalachian Mountains. If we were lucky, the wall heater in the winter was working and if we were not, then we relied exclusively on space heaters, which only warmed one part of the room. I lived in studio apartments, one bedroom and even a two bedroom for a brief three month period while my mom dated the air conditioning repair man.
I know that my story is not unique. I know that I'm not the only one to ever come from a broken home and I'm not the only one to have a father who was only partly in my life.
My parents were married originally and then divorced and then married again.
Frankly, I can't remember exactly what the state of their relationship was. The divorce was nothing but a piece of paper that they signed and then continued through volatile fights and explosive proclamations of love.
A lot of people growing up in that kind of family decide that this is what love looks like and seek that out as adults.
Not me.
I want to get as far away from that as possible. I want my life to be about something more than drama. In fact, the only kind of drama that I wanted was the one I found in books and television shows.
My mom walks around my three-bedroom, three-bath house, which was built in the early 2000s, with her mouth on the floor.
“How much did this thing cost you? I had no idea that you were making so much money.”
I glare at her.
We haven't talked about her debt or anything for that matter and my anger is smoldering deep inside.
“No, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just…