Another School Paper About Melissa

Disclaimer: In no way am I able to tell the future. This is one of many possibilities. It any part of this does indeed come true it is merely coincedence. Keep in mind this FICTIONAL STORY is a product of my own imagination and in no way reflects my thoughts or feelings on Melissa, it pretty much is a story based on real people.

It is May, a month of endings and new beginnings for every high school graduate. It is also a time for parents to say good-bye to their children and start a new life without their children to look after. To everyone this is a time for second chances. To Melissa, the future may hold more for her than her son. While Levi is going to go to college to become an adult, Melissa gets to go home to an empty house and be a child. Melissa has looked forward to this day and dreaded it at the same time. It seems her whole life has revolved around her son; she poured all her resources into raising him better than she had been and giving him opportunities that she never had. Her life is a series of tick marks: childhood, before Levi, pregnant with Levi, and many others centered on Levi’s achievements. Now she can’t be as involved as she is used to, and thinks that maybe she should have spent time “raising” herself. Melissa credits Levi’s successful upbringing on the time she didn’t spend on herself. Levi has a strong set of morals instilled in him and even though he tried drugs a couple times he isn’t a druggie. He is everything Melissa wanted; he is nothing like his father.

The last eighteen years have brought many trials onto Melissa. Time has certainly laid its mark on her. She seems much older than she really is. Being over worked has worn her out, and she has paid the price for being the good mother. She has no regrets for what she had to do to raise Levi right but she wonders what life might have been like without him. Would she have stayed in Grand Junction? Would she have continued life with Sean? Would she have gone to college? Would she have worked on her own ambitions and grow even more as a writer? While she knows that her life looked bleak and dark like a never ending winter before Levi and that her life probably would have continued down that path she can’t help but wonder, “What if?” Some nights Melissa has a hard time going to sleep because the “what ifs” consume every corner of her consciousness.

Now there is no turning back and she can’t try a different “ending” like a “choose your own story” book; she has to be happy with the choices she made. Melissa knows when it comes to Levi, she made a lot of good ones. Now it is time to choose her new life to take advantage of the time she has to construct the life she would have wanted before Sean and, consequently, Levi.

It’s been so long since the reality of being able to do something else has taken hold in Melissa’s mind. There are so many possibilities that it’s overwhelming, but at the same time, it is kind of daunting because she isn’t nineteen anymore, she is almost forty. She hardly noticed her youth pass her by she was so preoccupied with Levi. Melissa has never been vain, but now she takes a look in the mirror and notices the crows’ feet around her eyes and the grey peppering her hair. Does life hold the same opportunities for her as it did almost twenty years ago? It there ever a time when it becomes too late to start again, when second chances don’t exist? Than again, forty isn’t as old as it used to be. Opportunities just take different forms now. There are people all over that recreate themselves all the time, some much older than Melissa. Now she just needs to find out what she really wants out of life. It is defiantly time to push Levi out of her mind, even just for a little bit. I’m sure he has. It is time to move on to different things and new adventures.