July 12, 2001

Fate over free will. She, like many others, had her own very strong opinion on the subject. 

Ever since she was a kid, she believed in fate. Things would happen as they were meant to, no deviation. No matter how much someone worked toward their ideal situation, it wouldn’t make a difference. Everything was set in stone since the minute she was born. 

Ever since she was a kid, she knew that neither she nor fate wanted her to be in a romantic relationship. The way she was wired, her overly emotional nature, was not something that the fates would ever curse upon any unlucky bachelor. Of course, like any young girl, she had a portion of her life that was plagued by dreams and fantasies of prince charming. However, she always came back down to earth, grounded by the knowledge that her fate was sealed. Some things were just not destined to happen.

As she grew older, her faith in her fate grew stronger as she ditched her daydreaming about prince charming and instead fantasized about her future career and eventual wealth. 

Boys were an interest of the past. 

September 5, 2017

On the first day of her junior year in high school, something-or, rather, someone-made her entire life turn upside down. 

Slowly shuffling into her second period, she was greeted by the most attractive guy she had ever seen in her entire sixteen years of living. It would be a lie if she said that there were “sparks flying the minute they laid eyes on each other”-like the movies always portray. She was cynical about even the concept of love, and he frankly just wasn’t interested in her or relationships during their first few encounters. It was actually a good thing, they became fast friends even though they were complete polar opposites-

he was tall, she was short, 

he loved animals and had two dogs, dogs didn’t like her all too much,

he didn’t own a phone and wasn’t on any social media platforms because he didn’t care too much about technology, she was glued to her cellular device,

he cared a lot about fitness, she was shaped like a cute lil marshmallow.

 But they also had so many weird little things that they had in common:

they both watched this obscure Asian food youtuber, 

they both loved to send GIFs as responses to texts, 

they even shared the exact same birthday, one year apart(it seemed as though fate was giving her a signal with this one). 

The more time she spent with him, the more she began to question her whole life philosophy around her being happily alone forever. She relied on fate her entire life and suddenly, it seemed that fate had done a complete 180, pushing her closer to this boy at every twist and turn. 

September 2018-

He became one of her closest friends, someone that she could confide in about anything, someone that she never had to worry about because even if they didn’t talk for a month, they would always somehow pick up right where they left off as soon as they saw each other again. Even when he went off to College, they still kept in touch, sending extended essays to catch each other up on their respective lives. Whenever he would come back(which was rarely ever) they would somehow manage to fit in some time to spend together.

-March 16, 2019

They ended up attending her senior prom together, his very first school dance. He had never wanted to go before, not because of the lack of offers(he brought this up often), but he wanted to go with her. He drove ten hours back from college, a couple days earlier than he was planning on returning to make sure he was in attendance.

A boy that went to University almost ten hours away by car and a girl who could walk to her (future) University in that amount of time.

It was doomed from the start. 

May 3 2019

Even though she knew this, her summer was a haze of happiness, driving around aimlessly talking about everything and nothing, exploring many of Michigan’s state parks, “flaming” each other at every twist and turn. 

He taught her so much about life, changing her view about so many things. She began to love nature, hiking, seeing the beauty in the smallest of things. She began to value exercising, feeling better and better about her body throughout the summer. She began to pursue things based solely off what she loved instead of the societal standard. 

She became a better person.

July 12, 2019

For the first time since childhood, she didn’t hate her birthday. She woke up nervous, but it ended up being one of the best days of the summer. Of course, her family and friends were there to make her 18th birthday wonderful, but what really made her day exuberantly special was sharing the day with someone who viewed birthdays the same way she did. Someone that regardless of how little they cared about their own, cared about hers just because it was hers. 

She spent the next month in a constant state of happiness, essentially floating on a cloud. But, like any good tragedy, 

all good things must come to an end. 

A mutual breakup arguably hurts more than a one sided breakup. The feelings are still there. There is no one to blame. It’s unfair to be mad or upset because the agreement was confirmed on both ends. It’s being in a constant state of sadness and the back and forth of “am I doing the right thing?” and “maybe we should try to make this work.” only to realize that logically, there was a serious reason why this conclusion was drawn.

They both just knew that it wouldn’t work in the long term. For a boy without a phone to be ten hours away from a girl that probably couldn’t spend ten hours apart from her phone, it would end in eventual sadness anyways, so why not just stop it when there’s only good memories attached?

July 29, 2019

She had a literal countdown. 

6 days. 

5 days

3 days. 

1 day.

August 3, 2019

He was gone.

November 4, 2019

It’s been a little over three months since that day.

She is now at a point in time that she’s been alone longer than she was even in a relationship and she still cannot put him behind her. She’s settled in a whole new environment, a whole new life, in a college with over fifteen THOUSAND options to choose from, yet she still pines over a guy that probably hasn’t thought about her once since August 3rd. 

She goes out, gets drunk out of her mind, and every. time. embarasses herself when she bawls like a baby in front of a party of random strangers rambling on and on about how she wasn’t good enough for him to stay. 

She holds her tongue when she’s sober because she just met these people, they don’t care nor should they care about all her emotional baggage from the past. 

She sits in her dorm room alone and cries, feeling so helpless as her misery yanks her back down to a dark place she never thought she would ever get to again.

She asks herself every single day, was it worth it? To be happy for three months, but to have so much suffering as the aftermath. She knew herself before, she knew this would happen, just being the way she is, the type of person that she is. Deeply emotional. Little things cut deep because everything and anything stings even just the slightest. She wasn’t built for dating, her emotional psyche too fragile, torn to shreds with each minor infraction. 

This wasn’t a minor infraction.

Everything that he helped her overcome over their short time together came rushing back tenfold. Looking in the mirror, she felt absolutely and completely repulsed. Of course he wouldn’t want to stay with her, not while she looked like that. Reverting back into a house mouse, her “scenic views” consisted of her roommate’s water tapestry hung haphazardly across from her lofted bed. Fresh air became a rarely obtained treat. Too afraid of being judged, she almost forsake joining certain clubs and sports because they weren’t conventionally “business major” or “feminine”.

Fate, as it usually does, ended up working out the way it was supposed to. Her regression from an optimal self pushed her even further into a constant state of self pity. 

November 23, 2019

Four months after her last encounter with him, she made a mistake. A handful of days before her break, the first time they were ever going to be in the same relative vicinity as each other, 

she got sloshed and sent a text.

It wasn’t anything scandalous, nothing too crazy, but as soon as she sent it, she knew it was a terrible, terrible mistake. 

Still, she secretly knew she craved a response. Anything. A message about how he’s taken now, something hateful, anything. Something that she could look at, scoff about, and have intense raging anger over. She wanted so desperately to hate him. To finally have one reason to permanently let him go.

He responded with three words.

Still, seeing his name pop up on her notifications made her heart skip a beat while unshed tears burned at her eyes. The excitement of the words “Pretty good” “You?” was the lowest she had ever felt. The fact that him saying three words gave her so much validation made her mentally recoil with horror, that even though they weren’t in a relationship anymore, his response provided her with an oasis in the middle of the dessert of her turmoil of emotions.

Still, like an idiot, she kept responding, turning off her notifications so she wouldn’t keep checking, but realizing all that did was make her check them more. It was like she was ripping the remnants of her already battered heart, over, and over again. 

Four months later, she’s still wringing out her heart into her english paper because she has no other ideas on what to write about. Her emotional turmoil so strong that she cannot fathom writing anything else because this kind of hurt just seems unreplicatable. Yes, she lost her boyfriend, but she also lost one of her closest friends long before they were in any kind of relationship. She counted on him for so long, told him things that she never bothered telling other people, and now she has four months of radio silence and three words.

It doesn’t seem worth it.

Losing a good friend, for what? A handful of really great months? Friendship can be great too, she could’ve had many more months of friendship instead of giving it all up for a few short months of something a little different. 

It doesn’t seem worth it.

To feel so much misery for months, unable to fix the giant hole in her heart. Unable to move on, not understanding why she’s stuck, stagnant, while everyone else around her seems to be moving forward. 

It doesn’t seem worth it.

To get into something knowing that it’ll have a 50/50 chance of failing and leaving you unhappy and on the verge of tears for over four months.

She doesn’t like her chances.

Four months later, she still wears that stupid necklace he gave her for their birthday, every. single. day. Holding onto the slimmest hope that he’ll come back. 

She never takes it off. 

Fate was right. She didn’t listen, but fate was right. In life, people were bound to push things onto her, acting as though that was the “correct way” to live life, but when faced with it for the first time, she ended up falling trap to a fantasy. She knew that her fate was sealed just based off of who she was, but didn’t listen. Grass always seems greener on the other side. 

Some things are just not destined to happen.

In a last word; would everyone skydive? The honest answer to that is no because I know from first hand experience that I would never in my entire life ever skydive. Frankly, I don’t really want to die so why risk jumping out of a plane? If a botched fall doesn’t kill me, the heart attack I would have in the air surely would. This doesn’t even touch on all the potential injuries I could receive by willingly falling hundreds of miles from the surface of our beautiful earth. 

If I’m not willing to skydive, why would I be willing to date? The probability of getting hurt from dating is exponentially higher than skydiving, why would I do something that would most likely just end in sadness? Why would anyone?

It just doesn’t seem worth it.