How Terra Got Her Fate Back

To this day I find pieces of you everywhere. When I move, when I unearth old boxes in search of linens, yearbooks. There you are, in the cracks, in the corners. I throw you away, and yet you still linger. For so long I thought that you broke me, which annoyed me to no end, because for you to have broken me in some ways meant that you made me. How could someone as awful and devastating as you have made me? My mind recoils at the idea of it. The insanity of it.

I am moving. I have a roommate now, and so finally I am no longer alone. She is the same age as me, just as funny, not nearly as reflective. It’s a good thing, a good balance for me. I believe God leads you in mysterious ways to your future. However horrible our experience was, it in some ways led me here. And here, I have to admit is a pretty fabulous place.

I empty the linen closet and find a receipt lying on the shelf. It is in your handwriting. Some kind of work order. How did it get here? You never even lived in this house with me. Did it travel with me? Like some kind of recessive gene will you always be here, at any moment ready to strike, to bring me down with the force of your cancer? For a second I pause, and then I throw it away. I don’t open the folded piece of paper like I used to. I don’t study the writing trying to discern your mood that day, or your mood on any given day. I just throw it away.

I used to spend hours, weeks, months, trying to figure out where we went wrong. By ‘we’ I mean ‘me’. I am nothing if not self involved.

I mean there was the drinking, the fighting, the doors you broke, the time I wasn’t allowed to speak all day because the sound of my voice infuriated you, the first time you pushed me, the first time you left a bruise, and well, that’s just the tip of the ice berg. Thank God you never actually hit me. Thank God for the little things, they are the ones that matter the most.

What was I doing? What were we doing? Was I even there? Was that even me?

Things like that make you feel like the stupidest person on the planet, and I’ll tell you why. It’s not just your fault, it’s my fault too. My fault for staying.

I wish I had had the courage and the strength to just grab my purse and the cats and leave. Forget my clothes, forget my furniture, all of it. Just leave everything I own behind. They are only possessions in the end. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know that I was worth more than my pride, more than my monthly payment on the furniture we owned. I didn’t know that sometimes leaving with nothing means you leave with everything.

And then Lisa died. Little cousin, little sister. 19 for one week and she passed away. Just like that, gone in a blink of the eye. I never imagined that there would ever be a world without her in it. I was just about to leave you when she passed away and suddenly I didn’t have the will power to get out of bed, let alone pack and leave. So I stayed. I wasn’t even in love with you and I stayed.

I stayed, I stayed, I stayed.

I stayed until the night I slept in the bathroom. Cold tile against my skin, terrified you would break the bathroom door too, I thought, "What in the Hell?" I didn’t leave, but I told you it was over. You slept on the couch until you found a new place to wreak your special brand of havoc. You are married to her now and I hear you have a daughter. Before the year was over you had two new titles, husband, father. I wonder if you are a better person with them, but most days I don’t really care.

I spent a year fixing every little part of me that you broke. I cried a lot. I prayed a lot, and when that didn’t work I screamed at Heaven. I told God that I believed in His presence, but as far as I was concerned we were no longer speaking. I disowned God. And then I cried some more. I lost faith in the goodness of humanity, in the kindness of life in general, but mostly I lost faith in me.

How could I be so dumb?

Let me tell you a secret. I never loved you.

Never.

That’s the absolute worst part. The whole entire time I was with you it felt wrong. I felt as if my life was somewhere out there but I had taken a wrong turn somehow. I felt lost. Even when we were happy there was something that wasn’t right.

When we broke up I had the feeling of running on an escalator. I was propelled ahead. This is not a literary allusion. This is real. This is how I actually felt.

And now I am healed. I talk to God again. In fact He’s the one who got me through this. I thank Him for Lisa now, instead of railing against her death. I still cry when I pray, but it’s an awed cry, a happy cry. It is a cry for thanks giving. Only one thing has bothered me, and that is the thought that none of this would’ve been possible without you. Which means you were my fate and the idea that you were my fate annoys me.

Not enough to kick walls or track you down and key your truck, but still.

And if you WERE my fate, then how am I to ever trust my instinct again?

You see, my instinct has always been fairly accurate. I know good friends almost the moment I meet them. I have "this is fate!" feelings about friends, jobs, apartments, and yes even cars. In general my instinct is never wrong. My gut instinct about you was, "NO".

Because of you I am here in San Jose. Where I met my new group of friends, where I found the job which led me to college program I am now enrolled in, which led me to the new job I have now. The college program I am in is fabulous, this job is fabulous, and my new friends are fabulous too. Also I am closer to God and closer to getting my act together than I have ever been. Is that all because of you? You who bent my arm back one day because I dared to ask you to look at me while we talked?

I guess it’s not infuriating so much as it is sad. Did I really need all that to get here?

Here’s what I realized yesterday, almost two years after our break up. No.

Lisa dying would’ve eventually brought me closer to God, even without you. I would’ve re-entered school on my own accord due to the fact that I was unhappy with my halfway finished education. It might’ve been a different program though, I will grant that. As for my new friends, I met them through a group of people that I’ve known for seven years, which has absolutely nothing to do with you. In fact, everything good in my life today has nothing to do with you.

Upon reflection I realize that there isn’t one relationship that I acquired during our time together that is still in existence today.

I used to think that God had it in for me. Then I thought that perhaps he just didn’t care about me one way or another. Then I thought that he had broken me on purpose to teach me humility, to cure me of that sin known as pride. Now I know better.

My instinct was always right. You were never my fate, you were a bad dream that is over now. In an abstract way, I hope that you are a good father and an even better husband. I hope that it really was just me that you hated and not life or women in general.

My life feels like it’s coasting right now, not too fast not to slow. I am exactly where I am meant to be. I never have the feeling of being lost anymore and I gain back a little more of myself every day.

Just yesterday I got back my fate.