by Melinda Clayton

Created on: November 16, 2009   Last Updated: November 30, 2009

On a beautiful autumn day in 1985, I found myself utterly alone. I had always loved fall, and that year the leaves were brilliant, mocking me, crunching underfoot and releasing their tangy scent into the blustery autumn wind.

It was the last day of classes before Christmas break. I was a freshman in a large, southern university, and in the past few months I'd had to do a lot of growing up in a short amount of time.

Before leaving for the university, in the wake of my father's extramarital affair, my family had fallen apart before my eyes. Because we lived in a home owned by my father's company, and because his affair resulted in his relocation to another area, my siblings and I had found ourselves temporarily homeless, drifting between schools, friends, and parents, belonging nowhere.

When the dust settled, my older brother joined the army and my younger siblings, shell-shocked, settled with my angry parents into a different house in a new town. As for me, I packed my things and left, riding shotgun to my boyfriend, Darren, in his raggedy old pea-green Ford Pinto, headed for college.

On that fall day, looking up at the old brick campus buildings, I marveled that I had landed there at all. Sheltered and naive, with no available parent to guide me, I had simply followed my high school sweetheart to this place. I had a full scholarship, which was a necessity, and at least I wouldn't be alone. I'd have Darren.

To give Darren his due, he waited until I was unpacked in my new dorm room before breaking up with me. "All set?" He had asked. When I nodded, he had said, "Good, then. By the way, I think we should see other people. I have to go now. See you around."

And so, with a proverbial kick to the chest, my college life had begun. I didn't hear from my parents that first semester. Busy sorting through the broken pieces of their marriage, caring for younger children at home, they had neither the energy nor the time to check on children who had fled the nest.

I didn't hear from Darren, either, exactly, but I certainly heard about him. Quite the ladies man, he was, and I was devastated. I had tried to talk with him a couple of times, with horrendous results. He didn't want to talk to me, didn't want to see me. What he wanted was his freedom, in no uncertain terms.

In many ways, Darren had been a parental figure for me, leading me into adulthood when no one else would. It was Darren who taught me how to drive, and Darren who took me to my first dental appointment at the

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