I didn’t ever expect for anything extraordinary from my life.  I was a typical girl growing up in rural Western Washington.  My parents are well off, and I can honestly say that I never wanted for anything.  I roamed the woods I combed the beaches. I would spend hours running from my house to the beach with books and shells, and even crabs and fish.  I threw starfish back into the water.  I had tea parties with shells.  A washed up stump was my spaceship.  I often visited far away planets.  My shell tea set was buried under some rocks by my spaceship.  I had the same one for a year.  One summer I swam in Case Inlet every day from May to October, and in May the water temperature is only about 50 degrees.  One winter day a storm came and took my  spaceship away, I was sad, but I hoped that it was off seeking another child to play with. I would play around the old World War II pontoon boat that had sunk by the boat ramp.   By the entrance to the development that I grew up in I had a fort.  It was an area under a group of trees.  The floor of my fort was covered with thick moss.  I really did grow up in a magical place.  When I was 16 we moved to Lakeland Village.  Here there were different adventures. I would go to the gravel pit and watch the frogs make the earth look like it was moving under me.  I learned to golf.  I took walks to the lake and read by its shores. I took bike rides around the lake.  Around 14 I began to leave my childhood behind and started to grow up. I had had boyfriends, and boys continued to be my best friends. I had one best girlfriend named Maddy.  I had 2 guys who I considered my best guy friends, Joseph, and Brayden. I had a steady boyfriend named Adam. When Adam was not around, Brayden was.  At least until my Sr. year of high school.  It was then that the three of them graduated.  Joseph went to Arizona, Brayden went to Pullman,  Adam hung around and I went back to Bellarmine, but it was not like it used to be.  Maddy and I spent time together, but nothing really filled the void that their leaving created.  It was as if overnight my life changed. There was no going back. Little did I know, it did.  And there really was no going back.