things I know for certain
There are a few things I know for certain - signs may or may not exist, doorways may or may not be cursed, and I may or may not be falling in love.
I used to believe that any and everything was a sign, everything happened for a reason, and the universe was constantly sending me big beaming headlights of premonitions.
I’d look for my future at the bottom of a coffee cup and avoid cracks in the pavement in fear of future repercussions. I’d pull my hair at every black cat and avoid walking under any ladders. I’d spot the same number twice in a day and then spend my nights reading about how they meant something, it had to mean something, anything. I’d be tracing numbers into my walls with sleepy hands until they pulled me into the maelstrom I called “dreams,” until I was laying between the 444’s and 777’s screaming to know just what it means.
I’d catch his eyes on me and start listing all the things that went impossibly wrong that led me to sit across the room from him, be thankful, be happy, be grateful. I’d stop at 5 and start over again pulling at another red sting this time, being careful not to weaken it.
And then one day, very recently, I found that it had escaped me. One day I stopped playing with my dolls, one day I stopped wearing neon tights everywhere (including, but not limited to - family graveyard visits, fancy restaurants, and school trips), and one day I stopped believing things happened for a reason.
Having to accept that terrible things also held some meaning was no longer welcome in my heart. I didn’t want to understand, honor, and revive these memories in my timeline that would eventually lead to what I believed to be ‘the good’ - before the good would get sour. Everything felt like it meant something more until it was proven wrong, again and again, and again.
There is a man and he is singing Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl to me on a drive to a beach. He has driven for 9 hours to see me after 4 years of make-ups and break-ups. The odds of us having ever met are ones I cannot really wrap my head around because it defies my newfound beliefs that “things just happen because they happen”. This means nothing, this means nothing, this means nothing - if I say it enough times I will believe it.
I started listing all the things that had to have gone right, and wrong, that would lead me here and I reset the list at twelve each time. The amount of good memories I have to have lived to end up here makes sense, the amount of genuinely self-changing pain I had to go through to end up in his passenger side doesn’t.
I don’t think the absence of pain makes pleasure, or that the absence of pleasure makes pain, but I do still think it makes things more meaningful. I just don’t want to assign meaning to my personal pain-pleasure journey because what if the life I live is simply the one I am living right now? What if all of it adds up in the end and this is it? There is no grand conclusion, there are just strings and patterns and roads and paths and they never really reach anywhere. What if it’s just a matter of living good that leads to bad, and bad that leads to good…until it doesn’t really reach anywhere after all? What if I succumb to one over the other? But also, would it be so bad?
I think of myself as an old woman with more wrinkles than stories to tell and I think she wouldn’t care to know the answers. She wouldn’t care to know if the pain led to the pleasure, or the pleasure led to the pain, she would just care that she lived. She would just care that she loved, that that was real and true and it wasn’t an idea like fate or coincidence. She loved and that’s all that really ever mattered. She would be frustrated that she spent so many hours re-living the pain in hopes that it would take her somewhere good. Knowing now, things happen, good and bad, but life seems to happen too, and that’s sort of all that matters when you’re that old and watching the clock. The before and after and all the red strings were simply set-ups to amazing punchlines over and over again. All of it was Life and it all meant absolutely nothing, and everything, at the same time. Fate and Coincidence took turns assigning value to Love lived and lost.
So, at the moment I’m leaning towards believing that things just are a series of coincidences. Maybe the morning I left home early but went back to grab a coat because of an unexpected summer breeze, and ended up speaking to my neighbor about her day. And rushed to the bus stop way later - and warmer, than intended, and ended up sitting next to the person who would become my future nearest and dearest, it was just a string of coincidences that led to a great outcome. It was just Life doing what Life does, and it is awfully self-centered to think that my insignificant self would have any sort of reason for being here let alone being thought about personally by Life itself. Maybe Life just happens to us and our pattern recognizing cavemen's brains want so hard to see more, and believe in more, because if things happen for a reason and if things are fated to be, then things are important. Then we are important, and we aren’t responsible, it’s Life standing above us with pins and strings lining everything up. If he’s fated to have met the love of his life at a bar and cheated on me, it is out of any of our control and responsibility - who are we to fight with Fate? who are we to deny that the universe has sent us so many signs is simply right?
Many things are fated. Life, death, grief, love, all of it is fated, all of it is meant to be. And then there is ‘The Doorway’. Now this one I know is fated but I know I will never be prepared for it.
I’m leaving my friend behind, on the other side of this godforsaken doorway. I’m wearing her scarf she’s told me it’ll keep me warm on the way home, she’s told me I can bring it with me next time but we both know next time isn’t promised with the kids after school clubs, the husband family coming into town, that sudden vet appointment, aunt getting sick and the storm that means we now need to fix the garden fence up, hopefully before that big spring clean and declutter that seems to take a full week. Next time is just one big blur of a question mark, the preamble to ‘life now’. We both know once I step out of this doorway, the one she’s lined so subtly with salt, that we have no idea when I’ll be stepping back in - if at all. And so, the hug lingers two seconds too long, another glass of water is had ‘for the road’, and I check my bag over twice “in case I forgot anything!” (I never do, I hate myself for not forgetting anything) and then, I’m off.
I know this isn’t personal, I know it’s happened over and over again to people everywhere, but I can’t help but feel so unprepared. Nobody warns you how lonely growing up will be, or even when exactly it’ll arrive. And as much as I am excited to see myself, and the people I love, living such a whole and busy life I am so terrified of all it’ll take from me, and all that I will be forced to leave on the sofa on the other side of that doorway, this I know, is fated to happen. This I have no say about.
So for now, I do the best I can. I smile when my brother complains about my parents lingering in the doorway too long when we are leaving my cousin’s house, I know Fate is giggling at us. I see signs in numbers and refuse to look up what they mean when they keep me up at night - this is my act of defiance against Fate, this is my act of working with Coincidence. I remind myself of my insignificance I watch romantic comedies and I cry when they say '“it was all meant to be,” I watch my friends grow up and away one life responsibility at a time. I always ask for a glass of water for the road, I always forget my hair tie on the sofa.
It was, and always will be, a bit of both.
What I’ve been consuming -
Audio
There is Something on Your Mind - Big Jay McNeely
The big life goal is for this to be playing when flirting around cooking Sunday breakfast with a lover
What a perfectly moooooody love song
I love love love the Bleachers, I love love love dessin’ up like a heart attack for ya!!
Visual
12/10
Insane. Simply fucking insane. Jonathan Majors is the cowboy of everyone’s dreams.
“While the events of this story are fictional (….) These. People. Existed.” is how this black western starts, and it only goes uphill from there.
Reading
“Do spiders dream? A new study suggests they do. By Elizabeth Anne Brown”
SPIDERS DREAMS SPIDERS HAVE DREEAMS !! THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE READ ! LIKE ALL MONTH!! This is such a fun article about a study into spider dreams. I LOVE IT. PLS READ.
What’s been consuming me -
I know I’ve been gone for about two months and I can’t really say I’ve got a good reason for it. As for what’s been consuming me this month so far - I’ve started planning Friendsmas - and it’s making me question why I didn’t become a party planner, I’ve started an insanely fun new Dungeons and Dragons campaign (I’m a half-orc bard x fighter), I’ve been starting to collect ideas for my massive 2024 Notion spread. You’ll be hearing from me in less than two months’ time, I promise. If fate wants me to live and write.