I used to know exactly what I wanted. I had specific ambitions and a direct route to success. I had the trip mapped out perfectly and nothing was going to stop me.

I never believed in Fate. I was a firm believer in life being what you make it. There was no higher power dictating what we do and don't have. If you want something you have to go after it yourself. There was no relying on anyone or anything else.

Everything went smoothly until the day I started college. I was in the journalism program on my way to being a reporter for a highly respected news program like CNN or 20/20. That was the plan. Okay, so I was under an avalanche of debt already but it was all worth it.

I met Brent in my international business elective. He sat beside me and I could literally feel the confidence emanating off of him. He smelled of success. He was on my map but I wasn't supposed to get to him for at least another five years.

I wouldn't characterize myself as a flexible person but Brent was worth planning a detour. He was perfection personified. Good looking, loyal, smart and confident. I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that. So what if the short cut was coming a little early? It was going to get me where I was headed faster.

He was studying law and international business. He wanted to be a billionaire and I believed he would do it. He was about as determined as I was, if not more. It wasn't until the summer after my third year that the roadblock was shoved up in front of me.

I was pregnant.

I was never one to dwell on things. I faced things head on and if a decision needed to be made than I made it.

That was one detour I was not ready for, so and I made and appointment to get an abortion. I didn't tell Brent. I could make this happen on my own. I knew he didn't want a baby right now anyway. But it turned out I wasn't a very good judge of what Brent wanted.

"When were you going to tell me?" he asked the morning of my appointment.

"Tell you what?" I asked, not sounding a bit nervous.

"That we're going to be parents," he said and grinning at me. Before I could say anything he picked me up and twirled me around. I wanted to tell him the truth, I really did. But he was so happy that I just couldn't. He changed my mind and he didn't even know it. My entire plan was ruined. Crumpled up and tossed out the sunroof of a luxury sports car headed in the wrong direction.

I didn't dwell on it. I accepted it. I was going to have a baby. I was due a few months before my graduation so I took extra classes and finished early. I did what I had to do. Like always.

I was twenty-three but my life was traveling at warp speed. I wasn't supposed to have kids until I was in my thirties.

Two months after our son was born, Brent and I got married. I felt like a robot in a wedding dress. I smiled stiffly at everyone and accepted their blenders and toasters. I even pretended to love the purple china set his parents gave us. He looked so happy; I knew I should be happy too. Everything was happening a little early but, so what? The point was it was still a part of the master plan.

The house was the next step. I always pictured a quaint little bungalow on the outskirts of town with a pearly, white picket fence and tulips growing year round. My dreams were unreasonable at times maybe but it felt like is was all I had to hang on to anymore.

We got a large red brick house in the suburbs with a wrought iron gate and pillars on the front porch. There were rose bushes all around the house that the gardener looked after.

I convinced Brent to take down the iron gate and put in a white picket fence. Somehow I felt like the fence that only reached my knees protected us from anything unpleasant better than the ugly iron gate.

Only, the fence couldn't shield us from the uneasiness that was inside me from the beginning.

I graduated but it didn't matter. I had a family to take care of now. Everything was perfect, but it didn't matter. I didn't stick with the plan. My short cut had taken me in a totally different direction and nothing was how it was supposed to be.

I tried so hard to be happy but I hated watching Brent leave for work everyday. I hated feeding our son his pureed peas and turkey. I wanted to be on the news not watching it in my son's nursery.

I was the type that went after what I wanted but that white picket fence suppressed my dreams. It kept them locked inside and I wished everyday to have that big wrought iron gate back. At least it hadn't made me feel like my dreams were just out of reach; just beyond the borders of what I thought I wanted.

I hated it when Brent "took care of things". My school debt miraculously disappeared. My mother stopped calling looking for money. Every problem we ever encountered disappeared in a puff of smoke after Brent told me to "go play with the baby, I'll take care of it". I wanted to take care of myself. Be independent; show everyone I could do it on my own. I felt like I was living in some sort of soundproof, lifeproof shelter I had ordered the gardener, pool boy and maid to build.

I was a housewife, my own worst nightmare. I had the training to follow the path I had mapped out for myself but for some reason I was stuck behind this roadblock. What I thought perfection was supposed to be. I didn't think I was allowed to give up what I was supposed to want.

I started to ignore Brent and let the nanny take care of the baby. Brent couldn't understand me anymore. He thought he had given me everything. And he had, but the problem was I never wanted everything.

One day after my son's third birthday I got a call from my mother. She sounded drunk as ever. I hoped she would have gotten help by now, but of course she was still the same old alcoholic, whore she'd always been.

"Where's your rich husband?" she said, sounding characteristically bitter.

"He's in Boston on business. Why are you calling me now after all these years?" I demanded. The one thing I had accomplished was burning all bridges that connected me to my mother. She was poison then and was poison now.

"Oh, I've been in touch with Richie Rich since you married him. Thanks for the wedding invite by the way," she said and laughed.

"What do you mean you've been in touch?" I asked.

"Just for change of addresses or you know, raises in the cost of living," she explained.

"What are you talking about Mother?" I asked. The pieces were coming together in my head and I didn't like the picture I was seeing.

"He's late on his payment this month," my mother snapped, finally getting to the point.

I hung up on her. The phone rang again a minute later but I ignored it.

I found Brent's old bank statements, cheques and income tax forms. He kept everything, the little pack rat. He had been paying my mother every month since we got married almost three years earlier. The amount changed one in awhile but he sent her money every month without fail.

So, my one accomplishment had been a lie this entire time. She was never really gone. She had just been brushed under the rug for a while. She managed to hold onto my coattails like a leech, sucking the life out of me and I never even noticed.

I wanted to scream at Brent but he wasn't going to be home for days. His business trips kept him away from home so much that we barely even lived together. I wanted to rip him off his pedestal and throw him into the mud puddle it felt like I was sitting in. I couldn't understand how my own husband, the man that claimed to love me could have so little respect for me.

I packed my clothes. I wanted to start fresh by I had become attached to my son despite myself. I packed his things and mine into the SUV Brent bought me. He bought everything we owned. I hadn't contributed a single penny and it made me sick. I was squandering my own potential and I refused to do it any longer. My son would grow up to see me as an independent woman that did what she had to do to survive. Not a bored housewife that taped every episode of 20/20 for kicks.

It was time to get back on track. This marriage was a rest stop, not the end of the road. I was only twenty-seven; I still had time to accomplish what I was meant to.

Brent would come home to an empty house and see what it was like to be me. He would have to go to sleep in a house so full of meaningless possessions it might as well have been totally empty.

As I drove away, I watched the white picket fence get smaller and smaller until it only existed in my dreams.

Maybe that's the only place it ever existed.