Fate

I have been pondering the role of fate in our lives today. Really how much does fate play a role in our lives? Why is it that you were born to the parents that you were born to? Live in the land that you live in? Are rich or poor?

I am not the first person to think thus, nor will I be the last. Plus what are we supposed to get from the encounters with others that we have? I have had situations like a job that I got once, were it was the last minute, and I was running around trying to call on it, then I got it. Then I met someone on that job who changed my life, but they are no longer in my life. What should I take from that, what was the purpose?

Like when I was 15, I was running with my "best friend" (in quotation marks because she was a backstabber), and she mentioned one of her cousins in Tonga and I thought to myself "I wonder what would happen if I went there and met him, would he like me?" Then he came to America and it turned out that he did like me and we ended up married. Then I have had a lot of dramatic experiences with fate.

My husband and I had a rocky start to our marriage, there were things that happened and I was very upset over them. His family whisked him off to California before I even knew what to think and before things could get worked out. I had one chance, he was going to Tonga in two days (he had trouble with his visa anyways) I had to find someone to cover me at work and no one was answering the phone, so I left messages (which I hate to do). I got a last minute ticket and packed my bags. My mom and I got lost, we barely got to the airport and I missed the plane. But there was one more going out that night and I just barely made it (running all the way, carrying a baby and pregnant to boot). I went to a different airport than the one that my husbands family were told I was coming to and on the off chance that I might be there they had driven an hour from the other one to find me. Just in time since my baby had got his clothes wet and I was very pregnant and very tired. He flew out to Tonga the next day and my mom and I worked very hard, just barely meeting deadlines for immigration (the rules were literally changed the next day after we filed). It took 9 months and I had my daughter alone before he came back. The whole time I didn't really know what I was doing or why, I just acted.

That is also how I found the duplex apartment that we live in. We were kicked out of our other apartment (because my husband lost his job and we couldn't pay). After one night at my mom's I searched the internet and there was very little for rent, except this place fit the description. I was almost out of gas and but I went to the appointment with the manager anyway. Then I couldn't find the address and was running around then I called him and found the place and he gave it to me on the spot (This was also while pregnant, baby number 3).


Last year, my cousins were travelling home from a family reunion on labor day when a drunk man swerved across the meridian and hit into their truck and killed them. That was also fate, very unfortunante fate.

I think about how things happened to me, when I was 15 I didn't know that I had food allergies that affected my reasoning skills. Lot's of people won't believe me, but it used to be very hard to make positive assertions. Even when confronted by little decisions like what time to make an appointment or whether or not I should make an appointment, I would sometimes say yes knowing that I couldn't make it and then regret it later. Or I would say yes to do something that I knew I couldn't do or to do something I shouldn't do.

Thus in this state, I think that it was not fully my decision which made it so that I married my husband, or even that I brought him back from Tonga. I was just doing what circumstances dictate that I should do, it was not a pleasant way to live.

So now I wake up and feel differently from what I did then and wonder "is this where fate wanted me to be?" "Should I look at other possibilities for my life or should I be grateful for what I have and where I am at?" After all, my cousin who is every bit as good as I am is still not married, that could have been me.

I have chosen to live with what I have, there is definantly a lot of joy to be found in my situation. But I wonder, what the capricious hand of fate has in store for me. There was so much drama, so much going on to get me here, that it is hard to feel comfortable with living life as though things are going to work out and that fate is through playing with me. It's like I am living with the anticipation of "what's next, what now." That is probably the most unsetteling thing in my life right now, that and the inactivity of being through with school, it's hard to get my goals defined again. School had deadlines, real life does not, or at least you don't know when they are. How do you know that you have one more chance to hug your kids, before they are somehow killed?

If you got this far reading about my thoughts on fate, thank you for listening. Now I am going to do the only thing I can do, keep on living. I hope your day is good.

~Strawberry Girl