Fate Has A Way Of Messing Up Things That Seem So Incredibly Perfect

I imagine a world where you don’t control me anymore. It has been years since we’ve seen or heard from each other. You followed your dreams and I followed mine. Those dreams, the ones that made it so hard for me to let you go are the reason why it would have never worked, and the ones we shared. We both have nomadic souls, meant for traveling, but we both want to be home. It doesn’t make sense, it’s an irony that we will never quite understand. But you made me feel at home, you calmed my anxieties, but in this world I imagine there is no more you.

This world is years past where we are now. Where I only see you from time to time in my dreams. At this point I stopped Googling you and stopping keeping up with your progress, what city you are in now and what team you are on. We’ve both fell in and out of love and we both are happy with how are lives are turning out, yet there’s still something that’s missing that we are too high to feel at the time.

I imagine the love of my life takes me to this unknown city and he gives me a ring. He promises the forever that I have been searching for. He promises to take care of me and love me to the end of the earth. He promises me everything I told you I wanted one day. He promises me everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Because I had let you go I now have everything I’ve wanted.

The only problem is that fate is weird, fate has a way of stepping in and changing your life at the most unexpected of moments. Fate doesn’t care if you’re happy or sad, it just cares about creating balance in the world. That fate has a way of messing up the things that seem so incredibly perfect.

See we stopped keeping in touch. We lost each other in the madness of this world. We’ve grown up and fell in love with life and new people and the adventures of the life over the years. And here I am sitting in my car where in the first time in years I wonder where you are and how you are doing. I want to know what team you’re on, how you’re playing, and what city you may be in now. I want to know if you’ve found the one like I had, I want to invite you to my wedding, that way we can have the sweetest of goodbyes. So you know that my dreams did come true.

You’re all I can think about again, I finish my drive and next thing I know I’m standing in an off the beaten path coffee shop. If only you knew I started drinking coffee now. This place isn’t anything special but it reminds me of home and not this unknown city the man of my dreams brought me to. I look up when I hear the door chime as another customer walks in, and that’s when fate crushes me. When my world stopped turning. After years here we are in the same city, in the same coffee shop, staring at each other. Every memory, every word you said that made me fall in love, and every word you said when you told me you didn’t want the same thing came flooding back to me.

The look on your face was a mix of pure joy, pure confusion, and yet at the same time no emotion at all. You break the silence first, it’s awkward. You ask all the necessary questions, and I reciprocate. It’s a simple meeting, one that neither of us quite know how to handle, as I’m paying for my coffee you step in and hand the cashier your card. I smile a polite thank you and all you say is that if my number hasn’t changed I’ll be hearing from you and I slipped out the shop into the car the man of my dreams is waiting in.

Fate. Life. Everything. It’s all funny and weird how it works. It always throws a wrench into things at the worst of times.

He left town this weekend. I’m walking into my apartment building I share with him, when we lock eyes. You’re looking at me shaking your head. Here we are in a strange city, living in the same building. I don’t know what makes me invite you up to my apartment but I do. You fill me in on everything I was wondering prior to seeing you again. I fail to mention by fiancé but I know you see his things lying around the apartment. We laugh and we fall back into our old ways. It’s beautiful and it’s magical.

Here I am, in a strange place with strange people. But then out of nowhere familiarity finds me. I’m home all of a sudden. This cold apartment is now warm. My life that I was so high off of now feels off and wrong. What I thought was a dream come true wasn’t what I thought it was. Before I knew it we shared too many glasses of wine and it was in the early hours of the morning. We fell asleep together.

For the first time in years everything felt right. This distant stranger brought more warmth into my life than the man I fell in love with. You went from being the person I knew so well to a stranger. Yet somehow you still have more of an effect on my life than the person I plan to spend the rest of my life with. Your words, your smile, your rough composure brought me back to college. Back to when I was in love with my best friend.

You confess to me as we fall asleep that you regret letting me go. That you didn’t realize what you had until it was too late. You confessed that no city was home, that you didn’t mind being traded from team to team, and going from girl to girl because no one felt as right as I did. You compared them all to me. You regret letting me go. You were in love with me, but just too stubborn to see it.

Fate, always throwing a wrench. A sick irony.

There you are within reach. Here I am at a fork in my life. Do I choose the man who let me go years ago, the one that life brought to me in a strange place? Or do I choose the man who is giving me the world, a cold one at best?

Fate does weird things, and has weird timing let me tell you that. But there’s one thing I know for sure is that this is a world I’m imagining. This my coping mechanism. This is just a hope I have for the future. It’s not the future, it’s now. It’s not what I thought or what I had hoped it would be. But I can dream. I know one day fate will step in, it may not be you but I will get my happy ending. You’re just another bump in the road, another brick in the wall, and another step in my ladder. I just hope that when I find my dreams that you are also finding yours. Yours truly.