Crossroads: Where Do I Go?
Crossroads, the 2002 teen, road trip movie starring pop star Britney Spears, may have been considered cheesy and was not well-received by film critics. However, this movie spoke to me as I watched it at the theater with my aunt. Though I had been out of high school for seven years and was in my mid-twenties, I was at a crossroad in my life. During January or February of that year, I was secretly contemplating on leaving my marriage. D and I had been through counseling on and off throughout our marriage of over two years. As hard as we both tried (seems like I was doing most of the trying), things were not working out. I wanted to do the right thing and stick it out for better or worse, even if worse remained. I just did not want to look like a failure to others and I also did not want to lose what I thought was my only chance at love.
For the past year, I was learning that a person could be happy without being in a relationship. Seeing my newly single aunt blossom over that past year made me wonder if I was better off leaving an unhealthy marriage. After the movie, we went back to my aunt’s house so I could pick up my dog, I called D’s cell phone from the landline. He would not tell me where he was at that moment, yet he always expected me to update him on my whereabouts. Strangely, D acted like he did not care that I was calling him on a Saturday afternoon to let him know my whereabouts.
“I thought you wanted me to check in with you so you would know what was going on with me,” I said to my husband over the phone. This was my way of trying to make this marriage work: by doing what he wanted me to do, yet he believed he never had to give me an account of his comings and goings. Throughout our marriage, D always wanted me to page him or call him to let him know that I got home from work or made it to a relative’s house after having gone somewhere like the movies or a restaurant. I was getting to the point where I was fed up with D treating me like a child. I felt suffocated and started to realize that I had lost sight of me. I forgot who Laura Hughes was and knew I needed to make a decision regarding my future.
Fifteen years later, I decide to watch Crossroads through Netflix streaming. While I had remembered how awful of an actress Britney Spears was (she’s better off just singing) and some of the plot of that movie, I will always remember how I was at a crossroad in my life the first time I saw this film. This time around, I analyze some of the elements in this movie and apply them to my life at forty years of age.
Lucy (Britney Spears) is a straight-A student raised by a single father who plans her future for her. Luckily, no one ever tried to control my life until D. After feeling suffocated by him, I could relate to Lucy wanting to stray from her father’s plans for her as I wanted to build my own plans without D.
At the beginning of the film, ten-year-old Lucy and her two best friends bury a box full of their dreams in the ground of a park. They promise to come back to that spot on the night of their high school graduation. Over the years, the friends drift apart but that box full of dreams brings them together.
That long buried box of dreams represents the past. Seeing this movie again brought back the memory of my crossroad moment. I had forgot about the difficulty of making the decision of leaving my ex. This decision did not spontaneously happen; it took lots of prayer and some unpleasant circumstances to make my decision. My buried up dream was to experience freedom like my single-again aunt and to find myself again. Throughout my marriage, I felt trapped and lost.
Now, I realize I have taken my freedom as a single woman for granted and strongly yearn for marriage and a family of my own. The three friends chase after their buried dreams to discover that dreams don’t always turn out the way they hoped. Well, my long-buried dream to experience freedom from an abusive relationship and learn about myself all over again came true several months after seeing that movie in the theater, I don’t want that life for me anymore. My dream of over twelve years is to experience a loving, Christ-centered marriage while still being true to me.
As for this moment, which has been exactly fifteen years since I made my decision to take the dog and leave D, I am sort of at another crossroad in my life. It’s not something I can define now, but I know with prayer and God’s guidance He will direct me in the right path.
