questioningyourfate

[questioningyourfate]

The Anonymous Premature Burial

Fate here to help someone buried in their own delusions of grandeur. 

Fate,

I’ll try to keep this short, but basically, snowboarding was my life a few years ago. I was too old and too slow to do anything on a competitive level, but I had a job as an instructor at a resort. I soon made friends with some ski mountaineers who started taking me out in the backcountry once I’d done everything at the resort, including the Extreme terrain and stuff that you had to take a gate out of bounds to access, and gotten bored with it. 

We were always safety conscious. My buddies had all taken avalanche safety courses, and they lent me the materials they’d kept around so I could study them, being too broke to afford to take a class myself. I was able to score some equipment (beacon, shovel, probe) off a sympathetic ski patroller who’d recently retired and was moving to Florida, so I was as set as my friends.

We also always checked the avalanche forecast for the area we planned to go riding. On the day I’m writing to you about, avalanche conditions were moderate, which is the second-lowest danger rating. Our route wasn’t supposed to go past any seriously steep terrain or in the direction where the forecasters cautioned the heaviest snow loading was said to have taken place, so we figured we’d approach with caution and only proceed if all looked good. 

The first two miles or so were fine because they were all in the trees. The first couple slopes we crossed once we got near treeline, we went one at a time, and we all crossed safely. I guess that made us cocky. The third slope didn’t look any different from the first two, and while the first three of our group made it across just fine, when the last two of us went across maybe a little too close together, all hell broke loose. 

I was swept off my feet instantly. No time to scream as the snow hurled me down into the trees. I could feel branches catching at my body and then snapping off as I flew past. I couldn’t grab onto anything, though, because of how fast I was going and how much snow was pressing in on me from all directions. I just knew I was going to die. What I didn’t know was whether it would be from hitting a tree at 70 miles per hour or suffocating when that snow settled on top of me.

It took me a second to realize that the snow and I had stopped, probably because I was so surrounded by white whether I was moving or not that I couldn’t tell the difference until my surroundings stopped hissing around me and pressed in hard. I instinctively took a deep breath, even though I knew logically that it would do me no good…and then had to take another, and another, and another, because much to my amazement, I could actually breathe!

I wouldn’t learn until my buddies homed in on my beacon’s signal half an hour later that the heavy, slabby snow had settled around me in such a way that there was a small fissure running across my mouth and chin, else I’d have suffered the same fate as the friend who’d crossed that slope at the same time I had. One of the Search and Rescuer team who eventually came to get us off the mountain said that my slope buddy had most likely died only minutes after burial.

I had broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a broken pelvis, two broken legs (in different places), and a slew of torn and twisted muscles. I had to move back in with my parents because I needed so much help over the next few months. When the next ski season started, I talked to my supervisor to see if maybe I could work in a limited capacity, just with very young kids who were raw beginners perhaps, but she said that while they’d be happy to have me back once I could pass the physical, liability concerns dictated that I’d have to transfer to one of the off-slope departments if I wanted to work that season.

I decided to take it as a sign that I was meant to go a different route. I’d heard so many stories about people who survived wilderness disasters that were meant to be unsurvivable, climbers on Everest and K2, that guy who had to cut his own arm off to survive a canyoneering accident. Now I had a survival tale of my own to tell that could, I hoped, be a lesson to others and also, I selfishly also hoped, maybe net me enough money that I wouldn’t have to work for the resort or anyone else ever again.

Outside of a couple podcasts, a brief segment on the local news, and the guys at the bar down the street, though, no one seems interested in my story, at least not enough to pay me in more than a free beer or two. Don’t get me wrong, I like beer, but…there has to be something more to this experience, right? Clearly you, or the Cosmos, or whoever meant for me to make a difference, or I wouldn’t have survived to do so…right?

For legal purposes, I meant - and mean - to do nothing that might cause bodily harm to any person or property, and therefore, any difference you might have meant to make is one you’ll have to make meaning for on your own.

[questioningyourfate]

Fatal Impressions

Fate here to remind you that wishing death on another of your species will get you in trouble with your legal systems, and that as tempting as it is, causing the death(s) of those specifically involved in keeping you bound within those legal systems’ sticky webs will probably cause some sort of unpleasant repercussion…or so my lawyers keep reminding ME.

Fate,

My boyfriend, eventually fiance, maintained good boundaries with his overbearing mother right up until we were married. Then we needed to rent a place that was big enough for her to move into too, because “she’s getting up there in years” and “who else is going to take care of her? I’m an only child, and my dad moved out of the country, remarried, and is happy raising my five half-siblings!”

Fate, as much as I still villainize my FIL-in-name-only (he couldn’t even be bothered to make the wedding), I now sympathize with him 100%. My MIL scans all my shopping, throws away the purchases she doesn’t approve of (including foods I need to eat to keep a health condition from going totally off the rails), sees no problem with barging into any room (e.g., our bedroom, my home office, the bathrooms) if it’s unlocked, and “punished” my husband if he attempted to install (stronger) locks by hiding his car keys so that he was “grounded” over the weekend. The car keys mysteriously reappeared when he relented on the lock installation or as soon as I needed to get to work, because I guess even she has just enough situational awareness of who’s underwriting her meal ticket.

The frustration got to my husband quickly enough. It’s hard (lol) to get in the mood for hot newlywed playtimes when your roommate, who happens to be your partner’s mother, keeps barging in to ask you how to work the TV remote or what the internet password is. While my husband eventually managed to get her to stop that by reminding her that she’s always wanted grandchildren and she’s preventing us from giving her any (WTF, before the wedding, we decided we were still at least five years from trying to have kids, if we even decide we want to at all), let’s just say that the lingering pressure to sneak around like horny high schoolers is kind of a mood-killer. 

We’ve had fights. My husband refuses to kick her out, citing the same tired old “she’s getting older” crap (she’s the same age as my parents, and they’re still working full-time, going on epic vacations, and running marathons), but he’s trying to compromise by paying for just us two to have date nights and romantic weekend getaways (even though I do worry about what she’s capable of doing to the house while we’re away, considering the kinds of meltdowns she has about us leaving). 

He also arranges for mother-son bonding time to get her out of my hair for a while. These times are the best. I get to sit around and watch trashy TV without her sneering at my lowbrow taste, read fantasy novels without her commenting that I should be reading works appropriate to my own age, mindlessly scrolling the internet without her commenting about how, in her day, the acceptable thing to do was to go out and interact with other human beings…you get the picture.

The last time my husband took her out, it was only supposed to be for the afternoon, just to go see an art exhibit that he reassured her I “wouldn’t appreciate anyway” (sorry, MIL, I still maintain that Impressionism only exists because Monet was losing his eyesight and there’s no deeper meaning to all the fuzziness). Usually, husband and MIL are very punctual people, so when afternoon turned into evening, I admit to getting a bit worried. The art museum is in a part of town that had seen a wave of carjackings and muggings recently. I worried that someone might have stolen the car. 

A few minutes later, it also occurred to me that the same someone might have hurt or even killed my husband and MIL in the process of stealing the car. What if they were lying on the sidewalk, bleeding out at this very minute? What if they were already dead? I should probably call husband…nah, his phone never has service. Probably no point. 

I continued enjoying my trash TV. Dinnertime rolled around. I did briefly reconsider calling my husband, but I also hadn’t had Thai food since, well, before we all moved in to be one big happy family together. “Too spicy” for MIL. I ordered myself some Thai. It was delicious. 

It got to be bedtime. This was really concerning, or should have been. But I figured that whatever had happened to them, there wasn’t much I could do about it now. I stretched out on the couch, dozing off blissfully to the sound of some Real Housewives screeching at each other. 

“Disappointment” isn’t the word I should be using to describe how I felt when the front door banged open and my MIL entered at full tilt, bitching up a storm about how “those bastards at the museum didn’t even check to see if anyone was still absorbing the beauty of Giverny” before shutting all the lights off and locking up, and how long it took the two of them to fumble around in the dark to find a phone that worked so that they could call 911, then hang up and redial the non-emergency police line, then have the police show up and say there was nothing they could do except to wait for building security to arrive, then of course MIL was about to faint from hunger so they just had to find something tasteful to eat, then there was nothing tasteful left open, so they had to go to the grocery store, and isn’t that actually a good thing, because the smell of what she’s cooking should hopefully cancel out the dreadful odors of whatever [I] had eaten…!

Of course I don’t wish any unnecessary and illegal harm to any other living creature, Fate, but as I sit here furtively browsing apartment listings on my phone in my home office, I can’t help but wonder why you couldn’t have arranged for a chance interaction between my MIL (and maybe, just maybe, my husband as well) and the one of the armed criminals plaguing the downtown area?

What’s not to admire about Monet? For a mere mortal, he certainly understood the beauty inherent in working within one’s limits in order to see beyond them. I’m sorry he couldn’t leave as much of an Impression on you as your family by choice clearly has.

[questioningyourfate]

When the Clue-by-Four Won’t Work, Try the Five-by-Five

Fate here, this time to celebrate my 25th response by getting to the roots of five frequently-complained…I mean, asked questions from you squares. 

Because five is the square root of twenty-five, not because I actually think all of you are that desperately uncool, so don’t sue me any further. 

On with the numerical (s–t)show:

Why would you send me a sequence of numbers in my dreams that are exactly the right amount to put on a lottery ticket, have me buy said lottery ticket, and then not have those be the winning numbers?

What made you think those were lottery numbers and not, say, a code I concocted in order to lead you to the love of your life?

Why would you send me a sequence of numbers in my dreams that could be plugged into a GPS and/or used to indicate a specific date and time, make it so that nothing stands between me and arriving at that place at that time, and then not arrange for the love of my life to meet me there and then?

What made you think those were GPS coordinates/set date and time information and not, say, a code I concocted to lead you to some winning lottery numbers?

Every time I’m ready to check out at the grocery store, there’s always some hold-up no matter which cashier’s lane I choose. If I choose the lane where there’s only one person in front of me, they’re always two items into a cart jam-packed full of teeny-tiny items that each need to be scanned individually, one or usually more are missing a barcode so another employee needs to go track down the damn thing(s) to find the item number + it’s always at the very bottom of the cart so it’s not like the cashier can scan other items while they’re waiting. 

If I choose one of the lanes that has multiple people but they’re all carrying baskets that aren’t full, then when it comes time to pay, one will want to write a check, the other will slam down a stack of coupons (mostly expired), another will want to divide the payment between cash, a gift card, and two credit cards that they want cashback points on…

If I try to go thru the self-scanners, they’ll all be shut down except for the one that’s cash-only (I don’t carry cash) and the other one where some asshole didn’t scan something properly and now has to wait for an employee to clear it but the employee’s all the way across the store flirting with a barista. So just, why???

Someone has to remind all those once-a-month shoppers, customers on budgets, and hapless victims of technological glitches how much worse they could have it. 

Every time I’m on the highway, there’s a traffic jam. And everytime I switch lanes to the one that appears to be moving faster, it slows or, more typically, outright stops the second I’m in it. 

The other drivers in the lane you changed out of appreciate your sacrifice. 

Every time I’m driving on surface streets, I manage to hit every single red light…until I need to do something complicated like start a new audiobook or find the snack/drink I tossed out of reach in the backseat, then the lights are all green all the way through.

The other drivers who preloaded their audiobooks and put their snacks and drinks in the passenger seat appreciate your sacrifice.

Really, I do thank all of you for your sacrifices of airing grievances and gushes alike. It is nice to be reminded of one’s guiding influence on an entire species, even when said species would clearly rather flail around alone in the dark.

[questioningyourfate]

Sticker Shock

Fate back to remind you that, rather like the joker who trots out a wisecrack about dead mothers-in-law at the group therapy meeting just before the person who initially made the comment about her mother-in-law bursts into tears and explains that said mother-in-law passed away just after whispering that she loved her daughter-in-law like her own flesh and blood, timing is everything.

Fate,

I had it pretty rough growing up. I don’t blame anyone for that except maybe my parents and their deep-seated insistence on “spare the rod, spoil the child” doctrine. 

I knew they were never going to let me go, so I would have to escape. I got my driving practice hours in with parents and older siblings of sympathetic friends I was “tutoring.” I used my nerdy, straight-A reputation to charge classmates money for doing their homework in addition to my own. 

Once I turned 16 and had my license in hand, I used the cash I’d saved to buy a cheap minivan a graduating senior’s parents were selling. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. I knew it wouldn’t be mine for long if I stuck around, though, so I’d brought a duffel bag with me when I went to buy it. I stuck that in the backseat, and after I made everything legal with the DMV, I was headed for the nearest state line. 

Lots of people who hear this story are horrified. I was set to graduate at the top of my class, but I dropped out of high school, lived on the road, showered maybe 1-2 times a week, panhandled to supplement the odd jobs I did, and became a bum instead. 

I have no regrets. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend what I did, but I would do it again in the same circumstances. I got to see so many places, try so many things, meet so many people. After spending almost all of my childhood stuck either at home or at school, the freedom was incredible. 

The first truck stop I pulled into, I bought one of those cheesy bumper stickers that has a weird acronym of the town name. It was a nothing town, just some stop on an unremarkable stretch of road, but I was so excited when I put it on my bumper. I quickly realized that if I bought a sticker for every little podunk rest stop I came to, I was going to run out of both money and space on my minivan, so I eventually stuck to buying them only at truly memorable places like national parks and whatnot, but the pride and excitement of having a new one to put on my ride never got old.

I guess in some ways it was probably a good thing that my van life came to an end. I wouldn’t have gotten my GED, gone to college, met the woman I eventually married, started a business, and all that if it hadn’t. 

I only wish it could’ve ended without taking my beloved minivan and all its travel stamps along with it. Sure, the payout from the other driver’s insurance company was what allowed me to pay the deposit, first month’s rent, and most of my associate’s degree (kind of amazing how quickly insurance companies will cave if you threaten them with legal action after their client hit you head-on while illegally passing another car on a winding two-lane road), but it couldn’t replace that van.

It was my wife’s suggestion for us to take a long road trip and revisit some of those places where I got my first taste of self-sufficiency once my business was in a place where I could take a vacation of that length. It was her idea to pay cash for a minivan from a graduating senior’s family. 

It was also her idea to buy a bumper sticker from the first truck stop we pulled into, and if I hadn’t stopped her, she would’ve plastered it right on the bumper. I couldn’t articulate why I was so upset with the idea of her doing so, and I can only count my blessings that the resulting argument didn’t end our relationship right then and there. 

The bumper remained untainted, though my wife held onto that sticker and all the rest we picked up afterwards. Once we got home, she showed me the collection. It was impressive. I agreed with her that it would be a shame to let all those stickers go to waste, but I explained to her that what really destroyed me about losing my first minivan wasn’t so much the loss of the car itself or even the stickers themselves, but the sense of personal history that vanished when the wreckage got towed away. 

She thought about it for a second, then pulled out all the drink containers (water bottles, to-go mugs) we’d used on the journey and started putting the stickers on those, arguing that it would be pretty much impossible to need to have those towed away. I agreed, and by the time we ran out of stickers, there wasn’t a surface left untouched, except for the minivan outside. 

That was the night two drunk drivers decided to drag race down our street. The one spun out and used my - our - minivan as his landing zone. 

I was trying to avoid tempting you. Why’d you have to, if you’ll pardon the phrase, stick it to me again?

I have come to appreciate a good effort and a good sticker collection, especially one that has to be rebuilt from scratch. That’s why I made absolutely certain the stickers would be preserved this time around.

[questioningyourfate]

Utterly Convicted

Hi everyone! Fate here to remind you with my lawyers’ good cheer on behalf of their bank accounts that sometimes your actions don’t just have consequences that cause grief and misery in the short term. Sometimes the long-term consequences are just as agonizing and miserable!

Fate,

My best friend and I came of age in one of those Millennial cults, you know, the kind where the leader, who was my best friend’s dad, believed that the Rapture would come as soon as the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2000. And by “came of age,” I mean that I got to spend most of my elementary school years going to public school and doing normal-kid things until my parents sold everything to move to the compound and await being saved from the Abyss by the Hand of God. 

My best friend, who was the same age as me, I guess wasn’t so lucky. His conviction “helped” me stay in even after 1) the Rapture did not occur on 1/1/2000 or in the months between that and Easter ‘00 (b/c of course God would find it best to wait until the 2000th anniversary of His Son’s Resurrection) and 2) my dad discovered my mom was having an affair with my best friend’s father, left the cult, and tried to get me to come with him, but the damage had already been done and I’d bonded more strongly with BFF than I ever had with any of the kids I’d known when I was out in the unclean world. 

I did take my dad up on his offer to pay for my college as long as I attended one with absolutely no religious affiliation whatsoever, though I did stay in touch with BFF throughout my studies. I believed him once again when he told me with absolute conviction that his father (by then my stepfather) had been right about the Rapture, just off about the timing, and that his own (self-guided) studies of the Mayan culture had led him to believe that God had chosen them to be the unwitting vessels of prophecy when they ended their calendar on December 21st, 2012. 

I did start to have doubts of my own when I woke up sometime around noon on 12/22/12 (no need to set an alarm if you’re going to bed the night the world is supposed to end), checked the clocks, calculated that there was no time zone on Earth still on the 21st, and verified that I was still very much alive (I had a pulse and a heartbeat) and that nothing Earthly had changed, really. 

Bestie was still Bestie to me, though, so when he told me my step/his bio-dad, who was now in a long-term care facility at a young-ish age (b/c who needed to quit drinking and smoking when you knew God was going to save you before you developed cancer anyway), had had a revelation that God had spared us specifically so that we could usher in the New World Order as the King and Queen of the Divine Empire, you know, that prophecy sounded pretty good to a frustrated former Honors/Dean’s List student now working a series of soul-sucking temp jobs to try saving money for her own apartment, or, barring that, a space larger than a utility closet in a one-bathroom house with three roommates!

Still, I was pretty alarmed when, not long after (step)dad’s funeral, Bestie revealed to me the full extent of the plans God had revealed to Our (Step)Father Who Art Now In Heaven on the man’s deathbed. God only helps those who help themselves, Bestie/(step)dad had allegedly been told, and we had to prove we were worthy to be His Divinely Appointed Earthly leaders. This meant we were going to have to overthrow the current, Satanic regime. 

I think I just laughed at the time, but when he talked about buying tickets to Washington, D.C. so we could take a tour of Congress to “get an overview” and started scouring the internet for information about the White House’s layout and how the President’s Secret Service detail scheduled their rotations, I finally started distancing myself. I’ll admit that, as bad as I knew it was for the state of affairs in the U.S., part of me was relieved when Trump got elected, because Bestie piped down about his own plans for revolution since he “knew this was the Anti-Christ that had been foretold in the Book of Revelation” and that God was rewarding our planning by paving the way to let us come in as the saviors of the nation and the world after the destruction the False One would have wrought.

I felt the same mix of relief and dread, just in inverse ratios, when the foretold Anti-Christ lost his re-election bid, for that, of course, was when Bestie said it was a sign from God that we were indeed getting too complacent and really had to prove our worth now. I don’t know if the Anti-Christ’s “reign of terror” did indeed sow the fields for an incoming Empire of the Divine, but thanks to the attempted coup on the day Trump departed the White House, hopefully for good, I do know that the FBI’s fields were sown with instantaneous suspicion for anyone anonymously reported to their tipline as having plans to take “terroristic actions” against the government.

I was able to block the texts and emails from the federal penitentiary system after the first long, rambling message about my own corruption and the fate that awaited Judas, Cassius, and Brutus. Part of me still believes such a fate will be my own, even though I know, rationally, that I did the right thing…or did I? Fate, why couldn’t I have been gifted with the conviction that my now ex-Bestie maintains even inside his prison cell?

The gods of you mortals rise and fall, split and reform, are buried and resurrected when desperate artists appeal to the muses for source material. But I think you need look no farther than the founder of the religion that so shaped your formative years to know that it’s only the most earnest of conviction that’ll really get you nailed.

[questioningyourfate]

Helping Those Who Don’t Want Help Themselves

Fate here to indulge a concept I just learned about but had apparently started partaking in during my vacation called “self-care” by reading this letter from someone whose struggles I sympathize with to my very core.

Fate,

It’s a cliche to say it was love at first sight, but it was. The moment I saw her in her wetsuit, hair curling in the salty air, wetsuit clinging to her as she determinedly thrust her surfboard out into the waves, I knew I had to make her mine. As she was struggling to get on her surfboard when the right waves came in, I knew how I was going to win her over. By the end of the day, I had taught her to ride all the way back to shore, and she was as hooked as I was.

I started teaching her advanced skills, then inviting her out on my grandparents’ sailboat. I’d take her out for dinner and drinks when we weren’t already full from picnics on one of the island hideaways I knew. She told me all about her struggles, how it was just her and her disabled single mother and how money was tight but she’d gotten a second job at the local surf shop and had been given her gear (last year’s, no longer sellable) by her kindhearted if single-focused manager.

I took the forensics out of my forensic accounting career to help her come up with a budget that would get her back to one job, have enough for her and her mother, and give her more time to spend with me. When her car broke down, I used my connections at the local PD and their impound lot to source workable parts, then used my weekend hobby of fixing motors (sailboat and muscle car alike) to get the car working like new again. When a hurricane caused flooding in her basement, I rounded up some of the same guys to help get it cleaned out.

All this time, I offered for her to come live with me in the house I had strategically chosen because, while having a direct route to the beach and the marina, it was far enough inland to be above the path of the usual floodplain. I was understanding when she said that she had to take care of her mother and that the house had been in her family for several generations, so her mom was unwilling to move. After her mother passed, she screamed at me for being disrespectful for asking so soon, even though I waited a whole week after the funeral and only because she said the house was “haunting” her. 

I made myself wait for six months after she came to her senses and forgave me to raise the issue again, and this time only when she started complaining that the insurance rates and property taxes were going up, but she didn’t want to think about selling it to buy a new home because home values were rising all around and the mortgage had long since been paid off on her family home. I told her she didn’t need to worry about a mortgage if she moved in with me, either. She stiffened and told me she didn’t want to feel like a charity case. Charity case? She was my girlfriend and the woman I wanted to be my wife and the mother of my children! This should have made her melt into my arms, but instead, she brushed me off and said she had to go home. To her “haunted” house.

I didn’t see or hear from her for the rest of the week. I was only able to talk to her briefly on the phone when the next hurricane moved in, this one strong enough to necessitate evacuation. I knew I needed to help her, though, so while the rest of the city crowded the roads leaving the coast, I made my way to the marina, boated to her house, and made sure to smash in all the windows and batter open the door in such a way that it would resemble the unfortunate results of too much flying debris.

Weeks later, after we had returned and been living together harmoniously in my undamaged house, she got word from her insurance company that the wreckage and water damage was indeed too extensive to repair and that they were sending her a check for the full value of her home and all her belongings, I hugged her, told her her troubles were over at last, proudly explained how I’d helped them get that way, and told her that this was the start of the rest of our lives. 

She slapped me, hard. I tried to get an explanation out of her, but she slammed the bedroom door on me, emerged five minutes later with a suitcase in her hand, grabbed her purse, and slammed the front door on her way out. My calls go straight to voicemail. I’ve called and called hotels and shelters in the area, and no one will tell me if she’s there. Meanwhile, my buddies from the PD have started calling me, saying they don’t generally like to get involved in domestic disturbances when it’s not their jurisdiction, but a report was filed, so they have to ask questions about my potential role in insurance fraud.

I do hope that once she cools down, she’ll see what a burden I lifted off her shoulders, but assuming she doesn’t, I ask why you made me fall in love with such an ingrate?

I’m gonna tell you something my therapist recently told me: “Sometimes, you gotta learn to compartmentalize your helpful impulses, and then reach into those compartments only when someone outright asks to see the contents.” 

Since it sounds like you’re single now, I’d ask if you wanna come over and help out another charitable victim of ingrates, but something tells me we might help each other to your death and my wish for it.

[questioningyourfate]

Fate here to echo my lawyers’ words when they urge their clients to be careful what they wish for, because they might get exactly that.

Fate,

Longer ago than it seems, I was a fresh-faced young actress in a traveling theater troupe. I loved my work, and I loved the places, opportunities, and friends it brought me.

Eventually, I came to love the troupe’s gorgeous, charming, intelligent, funny, and did I mention gorgeous new director, and I mean REALLY love him. Our betrothal was a celebration for all in our company as well as all who dwelled or were fellow visitors to the city in which our engagement took place.

A blue-haired woman with lines in her face as deep as her mouth and pupils laid a hand on my shoulder as the party was winding down. She gushed about what a lovely couple my fiance and I made, and while she knew I would miss my days of performing, traveling, and socializing, she also knew how much I would love the home I would keep for my husband and the babies I would raise while he supported us, for she had made a similar sacrifice decades before.

I was, naturally, horrified. So horrified that I dropped my half-finished ale on the ground and fled the party for the nearby woods. I do not know how long it was between when the sun set and when the full moon rose above the surrounding trees, but that is when I, with the day’s food and drink wearing off and awareness of my situation sinking in, stumbled across a root and into a tiny clearing that hosted nothing more than a cabin so small and ramshackle it was really more of a shack and a kettle steaming and hissing over a glowing stone pit just outside the structure’s front door.

A woman was hunched over the kettle, stirring its contents, and when she straightened and turned to greet me, I saw it was the same woman who had literally gripped me at my party. “I knew you’d come,” she stated matter-of-factly.

The deal she proposed was thus: I would have the age of the universe to continue my craft, and then, once I felt I had mastered it all, to try my hand at writing and directing my own plays (as I had always wanted), then perhaps analyzing the collected works of all of theater in an academic setting (as had also appealed to me, though would have been nigh impossible for a woman to do so in any serious manner at the time), then any and all other pursuits that suited my fancy, and unlike the woman who was already of an age when she began her own current studies, my youth (or the appearance thereof) would remain with me, as would my betrothed’s, if he wished the same. The catch: She needed a set of working human reproductive organs for a formula she was testing, and they would need to be mine.

She barely had time to finish her proposal before I agreed to it. What was there to disagree with? An eternity or as close as one could come to it to explore the world and hone my passions, all while looking upon the breathtaking face of my beloved for as long as the sun should rise, and no needy, whinging, stinking brats to get in our way!

The full moon readily lit my path back to the city, where the party had dwindled. I answered my lover’s cry of relief and subsequent scolding with an exuberant explanation of all the opportunities that now lay before us. His face, his exquisite face, crumbled as I spoke.

“Our life now, the theater and the travel, they satisfy me,” my love responded once I had finished. “But they do not bring me meaning. Only when I have a home filled with the laughter of my children will I find that.”

It was not the end of our association, for even after he and his pregnant bride settled in the village where our troupe originated, he continued to write and direct new plays that were quick to gain wide recognition, in no small part due to the masterful combination of aching wisdom and wide-eyed innocence of the company’s lead actress. He mentored me as I began to write and direct my own works and celebrated, he and his wife and their children and eventual grandchildren, when I became an internationally renowned playwright myself (even if it was under a pen name, for such was the plight of women creators at the time).

His children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. all continued to encourage me after he died and his memory became too painful for me to carry around the stage and took to the hallowed halls of academia instead. I visit our home village, now a city in its own right, and tell his great-great-great…grandchildren what a wondrous man their ancestor was and how grateful I was to know him, even though I now live in the woods outside the city of our short betrothal in a small and ramshackle cabin next door to my new mentor. Even with all the years of devotion to my original craft, the look on their faces tells me that I cannot completely eradicate the sadness from my voice when I talk about the only man I have ever and will ever love.

I know you can no more change the past than I can, Fate, nor do I believe I would wish for you to do so, but what I do desire to know is this: why must each succeeding generation of my beloved’s descendants, no matter how far removed, be the exact replica of him, feature for feature?

You did say you wanted to look upon your beloved’s face for as long as the sun should rise, whether or not it was attached to him, did you not?

***

I will be taking a break to celebrate my inevitable independence from certain toxic influences in my existence, but don’t you darling mortals worry! I will be back soon to help you in ways your limited visions won’t allow you to appreciate!

[questioningyourfate]

Timing Is Everything

Fate here to provide a lesson from my therapist’s mouth to yours on the power of adapting to adverse conditions. Or maybe that was the biologist who appealed to me for help after claiming I was the cause of him being ostracized from his church, his colleagues, and his community…who can keep ‘em straight, amirite?

Fate,

I was literally born with a skewed sense of timing. Had I been born one day earlier, I would have been the oldest of the students in the grade below me, but as it was, I wound up being the youngest of the students in the grade I was in. Research suggests that surely being that far behind the bulk of my classmates, even if it was by a matter of weeks to months, was the reason I struggled so much with classwork, homework, and team sports. 

I got chicken pox three months before the vaccine was available. I didn’t get symptoms until the very end of the last day of class fall semester, when my mom sent me to school because I faked sick so much she was sure I was doing it again, and then had to spend the entirety of Christmas break cooped up away from my family and friends with a fever and the constant itching, only to be just fine when school and all the struggles that came with it started up again.

The year I took the SATs was the year the College Board switched from the 1600 point system with no mandatory writing portion to the 2400 point system where essay writing, never my strongest subject, became a required part of the package. The local college I did manage to get into instituted strict caps on their financial aid packages that year. They also dropped the major I had wanted to get my degree in just as I was eligible to declare it (and had already gotten a good amount of the introductory classes out of the way). 

I busted my ass to graduate a year early in spite of all this and did so…just as the Great Recession was declared and employers stopped hiring. I probably would’ve been okay, because my parents had been planning to move away, rent out part of their old house/my childhood home, and let me due landlord/property management duties, but the rental market dried up and I was forced to move back in with them with no resume-padding opportunities (and also living with my parents again, le sigh). 

I’d gotten a degree in computer sciences, which should’ve led to all sorts of opportunities, but every tech firm or private development co. I joined would fold within months of me coming on board. I did manage to save up money which I’d invest, only to have whatever promising company I’d bought stock in collapse overnight due to being busted for fraudulent practices or whatnot.

I finally got a stable-sounding opportunity a couple years ago. I was set to start on March 16th, 2020. Two days before that, most of the US followed the example of most of the rest of the world and shut down in a mostly useless attempt to stop the COVID-19 pandemic in its tracks. My new company immediately switched to remote work for its existing employees, and for those like me who would have to be physically present in order to do our jobs (the role was in computer hardware rather than software), well, we were S.O.L. And speaking of the ‘rona, there’s another fun disease I caught just before the vaccine was made available. This time, I got it a week before I would have been eligible to get my first dose from the local pharmacy. For having an allegedly mild case, I sure do have an awful lot of trouble breathing when I walk across parking lots still, not to mention feeling slower and even shorter on attention than I used to be.

The big picture’s bad enough, but there’s also other, pettier stuff: trying to take Mom out to her favorite restaurant only to find that they’ve changed their schedule and we’re going there on the day they’re closed. Trying to take a date to see a movie only to find that the theater’s shut down to deal with an emergency flooding situation. Not having time to claim a Buy One, Get One Free coupon until the day after it expires. 

My grandmother always used to tell me that “God chooses his toughest warriors to fight his greatest crusades,” but Fate, can’t you (or Him, or whoever) cut me a break once in a while?

Your God may indeed want strong warriors, but I believe He (or I, or whoever) also needs test dummies to see how the status quo compares to the new idea in order to verify whether “new” also means “improved.” Sometimes, He/I/Whoever will let our guinea pigs - er, subjects - flip from the control to the experimental group, and as with all experiments, the outcome is uncertain until we let the test run its course. 

It’s not all the time that we have a favorite subject whose results provide constant amusement, of course.

[questioningyourfate]

Sins of the Father

Fate here to wish fathers everywhere exactly the sort of day they individually deserve.

Fate,

As the firstborn son, much was expected of me before my birth. I was to carry on the family’s name, traditions, etc. Essentially, make my parents and their parents and so on proud. 

Unfortunately, I was born stunted. I have limited use of the right side of my body. The doctors told my parents this also affected my ability to communicate orally and on paper, so sorry for any errors in this letter.

My parents gave me all the care I was entitled to but started trying for my brother as soon as they could. When he was born, it was clear who was expected to carry on the family name and traditions. He was perfect in every way. Everything he did was praised and celebrated. Everything I did was met with pitying looks and the results being thrown away. 

My brother was naturally the one who got all the awards in school. It was frustrating, because he always had to come to me for help with his tests, essays, etc. To his credit, he would try to tell his teachers and our parents that the only way he had ever been able to finish was because of me, but they never listened. 

I did get mad at him once after he’d won an award for a science competition that I did everything but present for him. He won the top prize in our school. I waited until he fell asleep after he brought it home and destroyed it. After that, I was sent away to live with my aunt and uncle. The speed with which my parents were able to send me and my things away makes me think they had been planning it for a long time.

My uncle was the second son but because my firstborn father was perfect like my brother, Uncle and I understood each other. Uncle worked for my father and would tell me news of my parents and brother. My brother’s performance suffered the year after I went away, but my parents hired tutors for him. He started winning awards again, all through primary and secondary school. 

He kept winning awards in university even though he went very far away. Our parents had the money to keep paying tutors. My uncle also heard through another gossiping coworker of his that Brother would hire classmates from poor families to do whatever homework the tutors refused to do for him. 

My brother started to work for our family’s architecture firm as soon as he was licensed. He became a partner not long after that and became Uncle’s supervisor. Father granted Brother the rights to design a new office for the expanding business. It took longer than Brother anticipated and cost the firm far more money that they had budgeted, but it was completed. 

Father arranged to have a fancy dinner party at the new building to celebrate its opening. He granted Uncle a courtesy invitation, but when Uncle asked if I could attend as well, Father said that perhaps it would be for the best if only the senior partners and those on track to be senior partners were to present themselves. 

Uncle, Aunt, and I were playing cards when the local police came to the door. They asked if we had seen the news. We had not. They asked if we had heard or felt any disturbance. We had not. They said the new building, Brother’s building, the one that had all the senior partners and their spouses dressed in their finest clothes for the finest food, beverages, and services my father could find, had collapsed and buried all who were inside. They suspected there were major structural defects in the design. The investigation would find out for certain.

Uncle used his share of the insurance to open a bookstore as he had always wanted to do since childhood. He encourages me to use my share to pursue whatever dreams call to me, no matter how fanciful. There is enough money.

Fate, I do not know how you can grant me such a cursed gift. If I had not destroyed my brother’s award when we were children, none of this would have happened, I am certain of it. Why did you allow me enough control over my body to destroy all the work my family has done?

I think your linguistic skills are just fine, dear one, as is the rest of you, so feel free to interpret this indulgent metaphor as you will: Just because you’ve got the tools doesn’t mean you have to use them. It would be a real shame to waste that shiny silver shovel I gave you on burying family members who already did that work for you when you could be following your uncle’s lead and digging yourself a brand new path to freedom.

Either way, if you could toss it back to me when you’re done, I’ve got a list of perfectly deserving ingrates I’d be happy to share the business end with, if my lawyers would only give me the clearance to do so.

[questioningyourfate]

Let the Remote Control

Fate here to have another celebration of mothers in advance of Father’s Day, because I am regularly called a mother (usually with another, less appropriate noun compounded). 

Fate,

My mother wasn’t around much when I was a kid. I get it. She was a single parent, working up to three jobs at a time, and my dad wasn’t in the picture at all. It sucks that I spent more time with cousins, neighbors, and after-school care staff than I did with her, but we needed to survive.

I also got why we still didn’t spend much time together when I was legally an adult, even though I lived at home for a few years to save money. She didn’t have to work as much, since I was able to pay for my own groceries, phone bill, and all, but she did have a lot of lost relaxation time to make up for with all the stuff that got sidelined while I was growing up.

Now, though, her investment finally paid off. I’m making great money at my only job, I have plenty of vacation time saved up, and my boss tells me that we’ve got a seasonal slow period coming up, so I should use it. 

My mother always dreamed of spending time in France, a little in Paris, to see the museums and visit the Eiffel Tower, and more in the countryside, to relax surrounded by beautiful scenery, fine wine, and exquisite dining. 

I booked us two first-class tickets to Paris, a presidential suite at a five-star hotel with a view of the Eiffel Tower that’s right smack in the middle of a ton of Michelin-rated restaurants, a luxury car to get us to the countryside (I’ll drive, of course), and a luxury villa in the heart of wine country. It was her birthday last night, and when I brought dinner to her (I wanted to take her out, but she said she didn’t have the time for that), I told her that I could finally make her dreams come true.

She told me to either cancel it or “make a romantic trip out of it with someone my age.” When I asked her why she’d turn down the perfect trip, the perfect opportunity for us to finally spend time together, she said that her favorite TV show, the one she’s watched so many times throughout my life that I know exactly which episode is playing in the first thirty seconds even though I’ve never been a fan, has been taken off the only streaming service she has, so now the only time she can watch is when it plays on the local broadcast station. She says the trip dates overlap with the best season in the whole series, and she doesn’t want to miss it.

I offered to buy her a subscription to the streaming service that does carry the show, because of course there is one. I’ve offered to buy her a DVD player and the whole series on DVD. She just keeps repeating that she can’t go, she’s gotta stay here and watch her show. 

Why did you have to pull her show off the one place she could watch it on demand? I don’t like wine or care for art museums (you can see the Mona Lisa online without having to fight the crowds), and now my reason for trying to learn to appreciate them is turning down my efforts so she can make sure she watches Season 4 for the hundredth or whatever time.

If you don’t want the wine, maybe the cheese would be more to your taste?

All these streaming services and DVDs and videocassettes before them sure did make you mortals awfully entitled, thinking you were the masters of time, when even I have only so much control over its progression. Then once you start thinking you can control time, you start thinking you can control how others choose to spend their time…

I’m not saying that I deliberately had your mother’s favorite show pulled off her streaming service just to reassert control over an ungrateful species, of course, or at any rate, my lawyer says not to say that. I am suggesting as kindly as possible that you might want to carefully consider your own priorities, just as your mother has done with her own.

[questioningyourfate]

The Ravages of Youth

Fate here. First, I’m gonna answer a sort of general question I get a lot from people who are convinced that I deserve whatever legal and karmic action directed my way, and it’s usually asked on behalf of or sometimes by parents of babies and children who passed. Why don’t I ever step in to save them, is the gist of what they’re yelling and crying at me. 

I can’t tell them anything too comforting. The threads of each individual’s life are made up of different materials, different fibers, and different strengths. Sometimes, no matter how careful you are or how much practice you have, all you need to do is touch a given thread and it disintegrates. Most of the time, it’s nothing personal, it’s just that the material I was provided with is unsustainable.

Now, onto the more typical sort of mundanities people like to berate me for:

Fate,

I was a cute kid, as far as kids go. Maybe not beauty pageant material, but enough that random strangers would stop my parents if we were out in the mall or at the park and coo over what an adorable little thing I was and how I was sure to grow up to be a real heartbreaker someday.

Then I hit puberty. As if the growth spurt that went outward before it went upward wasn’t bad enough, not to mention body hair so thick that my classmates made monkey noises every time I walked into a room, I developed horrible acne. Even I had to give the one bully who shared all my honors and AP classes credit for the time he told me my face looked like a topo relief map of the Himalayas.

I washed my face every day, twice a day. I tried every remedy I or one of my friends, parents, or doctor could think of. Benzoyl peroxide, accutane, tea tree oil, low-grade antibiotics, this special scrub made from Dead Sea salt, whatever. It would maybe help things clear up a little for a week or so, and then it was like my face would get used to it and start breaking out again. It was so bad that I didn’t bother getting senior pictures taken and refused to let anyone with a camera near me on prom night.

My mother told me she had bad acne in high school, too, and she eventually grew out of it, implying that I would too. It got better in college, but it didn’t completely go away. I maybe shouldn’t have been surprised that grad school made it worse, but I was unhappy when it settled somewhere between grad school and college levels of badness once I was done with school for good. 

I’m about to be thirty and it’s still raging on. I’m sure it’s been a contributing factor in why I have a hard time getting dates, much less a relationship, never mind breaking somebody’s heart. I’m also sure it’s why I’ve been passed up for job opportunities I’d be perfect for, since most of them require a certain level of authority and experience and want you to look the part, and the only thing I look like I’m qualified for is busting gas-station and liquor-store clerks who don’t check IDs. 

I know we all have our burdens to bear, Fate, but did you have to put mine on my face and make me carry it this long?

You think you’re facing age-related discrimination or at least the appearance of it? Try being older than your whole species as well as most of the rest of its contemporaries! Everybody including your own lawyers expecting you to be on point at all times, never allowed to make a single error in judgment because, according to them, you ought to know better! 

You’ll have plenty of time to lament your squeaky-clean good looks or lack thereof, child. Let your perceived fresh-facedness be your guide as you fail - I mean, flail - your way upward.

[questioningyourfate]

The Fog of Brilliance

Fate back after another therapy session about the metaphorical power of untying your tongue and discussing your issues. Let’s look at a letter from someone who was given this power but can’t deal with the side effects:

Fate,

You can describe it however you want: introverted, socially anxious, quiet. I know I’ve been shy ever since I was a child. I preferred playing with dolls or stuffed animals in my room to getting into shouting matches with my cousins or the neighbor kids over whose turn it was to play Nintendo or who had rightful possession of the soccer ball or whatever. 

I never spoke up in school either, not even when I had something interesting and/or relevant to add to the discussion. I’d just save my thoughts, maybe write them down in my notebook, and then write an essay on them later for homework or save them for the long-answer test questions. I got academic scholarships to a good college thanks to my teachers writing recommendations about how I was a “hard worker with a fiercely independent spirit.”

I didn’t want to be so independent, though. I really wanted to make friends and impress potential collaborators. It took most of my first semester at college before I finally started accepting my roommate’s offers to grab lunch or dinner or do things with her and her friends, but I found myself actually enjoying going along, even if I couldn’t make myself say much. 

She asked me about it at some point near the end of the year, and I confessed that I wanted to be a more active participant and that I really did like everyone in the group, but my tongue would freeze up every time I thought about chiming in. She brightened up and said she had the perfect solution, and then she handed me some pills out of a prescription bottle of hers. She said they helped her with her anxiety, and as she was pre-med, she couldn’t see how they wouldn’t help me with mine!

I took one before the next time I went out with the group. I remember that I finally carpe’d the diem, so to speak, and did speak. I remember the shocked glances back and forth, and then the admiring laughter, and then some prompts directed at me to get me to say more, which I did, and which her - my - our friends absolutely ate up! I just can’t remember what exactly I said.

I was an English major, but I’d tutored enough aspiring psychologists and psychiatrists in writing to have figured that her dosage might have been too high for me. When the time came for me to give an end-of-semester presentation where I knew the material inside and out but dreaded how I was going to get my mouth to communicate it in front of the class, I took half a pill. I remember the stunned applause at the end of my talk. I still have the professor’s notes, praising me for my in-depth understanding of the topic and the grace and fluency I used communicating it to the class, which he noted that he found surprising considering how he wasn’t sure he’d heard my voice at all up until that point. I just wish his notes had gone over what I actually said, because while I still have the notes, I sure don’t remember how I translated those into a full speech.

Those pills, first my roommate’s and then my own after we both graduated and went on to study at our respective doctoral levels, got me through classes, dates, conferences, a graduation speech, teaching assistantships in which I was teaching the class of 101-level freshmen, more conferences and presentations. I remember none of what I have ever actually said during these events, only the applause afterwards and the comments from students and hookups alike at how clearly and eloquently I expressed myself. Tomorrow, those pills will get me through my dissertation defense. I don’t expect I’ll remember any of that, either, nor do I expect I’ll remember any of the classes I teach if I do take my alma mater up on its offer to hire me for a highly coveted tenure-track position. 

I would be a fool to turn them down, but at the same time, I would like to have a career or something I can remember! Fate, I understand that my flawed coping methods are mine to deal with, but couldn’t you have let me have a single room when I was a freshman like I begged Student Accommodations for so I could have avoided this dilemma entirely?

I can only open the door to your self-imposed cage, my little chickadee, and perhaps offer you a treat if you stick your head out and listen to what the world beyond has to offer. Whether you choose to fly out and find your own treats is now entirely up to you. Was that a good enough metaphor to pass muster in your writing seminars, professor?

[questioningyourfate]

Going off the Rom-Com Script

Hi, everyone. Fate back again to distract all of us from the ennui of our daily lives with a little ennui in romance. 

Fate,

I met my girlfriend in college. I was attracted to her outgoing nature, her intelligence, her interest in tabletop games that I shared, and of course her huge…tracts of land. 

Now we’ve both graduated, and I guess I feel differently about the relationship. I mean, she’s still the same extroverted, smart, geeky girl with…a great figure, but maybe I’ve changed? I was lucky enough to turn a summer internship with a non-profit I’m invested in into a fulltime job with a surprisingly good salary and benefits. But it is fulltime, and that means I just don’t have as much free time as I did when we were in college together, and that means that while she wants to spend every minute of every weekend getting together with our friends, or getting together with her friends that she’s hoping to make our friends, or breaking out the Dungeons and Dragons character sheets, I just want to curl up in bed and catch up on pleasure reading and aimless scrolling through social media. 

We compromise. I spend one day pretending to be a happy extrovert, and she’s even nice enough to arrange the DnD for that day, and I get to spend the next all alone in the apartment while she goes jogging or biking or whatever with all her new friends. The thing is, though, that I really like the time I spend alone. I really like it a lot. I get a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach whenever she comes home still in full-on extrovert mode, blabbing to me about her jog or ride or whatever with her new friends and how they’re SOOOO disappointed they haven’t met me, blah blah blah. I usually mumble something about how I’ve already eaten, but I left some dinner for her, and then I rush off to bed early.

This past weekend, I got no me-time because two of our college friends were getting married. It was a beautiful ceremony, a fun reception, I enjoyed catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a couple years, and all, but I was really ready to catch that flight home the next day when it was all said and done. That night, as we were walking back to our hotel room, I guess the beautiful night sky or the warm sea air or the whole reason we were there got to my girlfriend, because she took my hand in hers and said how much she looked forward to it being our own wedding day sometime soon. 

I must’ve frozen a little too long, because she dropped my hand and asked me if I wanted to have a wedding, too. It was on the tip of my tongue, all my doubts and fears and hesitations about our relationship, how I think I just want to appreciate being by myself for a while. Then I thought about how we were sharing a hotel room, and how we’d be sitting next to each other on the airplane the next day, and how the lease on our apartment isn’t up for another four months, and I told her, “Sure.” 

I now have a girlfriend who has been not-so-subtly Googling engagement rings in my presence and audibly sighing over pictures and videos of hideously expensive wedding venues whenever I walk into a room. I realize that it’s all my fault, Fate, and that you handed me the perfect opportunity to break free at last just a few days ago, and I was the one who blew it. Any chance I can have a do-over, preferably before she starts texting me links to those engagement rings and wedding venue websites?

Oy, I see why the leaders of some of your religions lament the existence of free will. You can write the script and set the scene with - if I do say so myself - outstanding perfection, but if it’s a live performance and one of the leads flubs the line on which the remainder of the action turns, well. Suffice to say it’s the sort of frustration that leads to the sorts of predicaments from which I needed to step away from my directorial - and no, I do not mean dictatorial! - duties.

Although I am envisioning a sequel at your own wedding when it’s the officiant who is asking you if you do indeed wish to be wedded to the woman standing at your side…would you like me to start writing that script?

[questioningyourfate]

A Message from Above

Hello all. Fate here to show that I can share some love with all who deserve it. Even if it’s tough love. 

Remember that I do edit some of these letters a little, both for clarity and to rid them of language that doesn’t show so much love, tough or otherwise.

Fate,

My husband and I are devout followers of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and we strive to be the best example of His teachings to all who are in need of His love and blessings. We also aim to show our children, seven boys and our beautiful baby girl, that they too can be the instruments of His love and holy word. 

I of course devote my whole being to caring for my husband, home, and children, but with seven boys and a brand new baby, even my husband and our pastor wanted me to have a little help with the womanly duties of the household. The pastor’s daughter, who is his only child who arrived only after YEARS of prayer to the Lord, came to live with us for a while. She handled the cooking and cleaning and a little of the schoolwork (we of course homeschool so as to spare our children the satanic indoctrination from the public schools). I stayed in charge of lesson plans, which seemed fine by the girl, as she didn’t appear to like giving the lessons very much, even though they were hand-selected by our church.

When our baby was only six months old, this girl asked if she could speak with me frankly. She said the lessons I was teaching my boys, which, again, were church-approved and Biblical in every way, were making her uncomfortable. She said it upset her to hear me teach the boys about why homosexuality was a sin and how the transgenders are defying the will of God. She said she was one of the transgenders, and while she didn’t see herself as a man, she’d made a friend at a youth outreach who claimed to be “non-binary,” and after reflecting on it for a while, the pastor’s daughter too said she also didn’t see herself as being either male or female but did find herself attracted to both males and females.

I really had no choice but to remove her from my house at once in spite of it being well after midnight, because any length of time she stayed, she could have started corrupting the boys and my own precious little angel girl with her dark influences. I did tell my husband the next morning, and he went to see her father about our concerns. It took a while for my husband to say his piece, because the pastor would not open his door to my husband at first, something about what might have happened to the “poor young teenager” who was left to wander all alone at night, though clearly not as much as she’d been left to wander spiritually!

Even after my husband forced his way in and insisted that he would not leave until our pastor listened to the very good reasons we had for kicking his daughter out, the man refused to take my husband’s concerns under advisement, not even after my husband reminded him in shock of what Leviticus had to say about lying with a man as one would a woman and what befell Sodom and Gomorrah after those villagers gave into same-sex temptations! Not even when my husband reminded the pastor that he had always preached the truth that a family is made of one man and one woman and certainly no in-betweens and their children conceived under the covenant of marriage! 

The pastor told my husband that there were a lot of things he was now reconsidering, agreed that it was best his “child” (my husband is sure he meant to say “daughter”) stay away from our household, and told us that our family was always welcome at church but that there might be some changes happening in the immediate future, and if we could not accept them, perhaps we should find a new church family.

I have prayed ever since for God to show this man and his DAUGHTER the error of their ways. I prayed especially hard after he hung a rainbow flag and an “All Are Welcome!” banner across the church’s front door. I do not want to welcome sinners to flaunt their degeneracy in my children’s faces, and while I know God is preparing His righteous retribution, I must call on you in the meantime to ask why you have not intervened on His, and my children’s, behalf. Why do you not warn our former pastor of the horrors that will befall him if he does not repent, reread his Bible, and lead his children and his followers back to the light?

All it takes is one forward-thinking, societally-shaking revolutionary and their holy father changing what you think you know about the world, and now your strictly Levitican all-cotton, no-blend undies are in a wad, huh? And Sodom and Gomorrah…it’s been a while since I read your holy text, but isn’t the real lesson there about how you’re not supposed to treat visitors? Especially when those visitors are angels sent to deliver you a message from your Lord Himself? And angels, being immortal non-human messengers, have no need for sex organs or assigned gender roles? 

Yes, someone did need a rude awakening and a reread of your Bible, I’ll agree with you on that.

[questioningyourfate]

A Happy Escape

Fate here to celebrate what some of you think is the luckiest number ever in my thirteenth response to one of your questions by answering one from a real fan:

Fate,

Seven years ago, I met the funniest, smartest, most charming and attentive man. Problem is, a lot of other women also thought he was funny, smart, charming, and all that, and I guess he felt the same about them. 

I found out I was pregnant just before I found out about the cheating. I went to break up with him and told him, after he asked, that I had no intention of keeping the pregnancy. He got down on one knee and pleaded with me not to end our relationship or the life of our child. I told him the abortion had nothing to do with him and that I never wanted to be a mother anyway. He swore he would change his ways, commit to me and our baby, and be the primary caretaker when it was born. 

I told him I’d need to think about it and went to my parents’ for the weekend. I am my parents’ only chance to have grandchildren, however, so of course they convinced me to go back to my boyfriend. 

I did. He did not keep up his commitments. I tried to push for him to have full or at least primary custody of the child I was never able to bond with or love, but the judge deemed it would be in the kid’s best interest to have equal time with his parents, never mind that my ex always has some excuse as to why he can’t take the kid when it’s his week. Oh, and the once-proud grandparents have kind of cooled on spending time with their grandchild as soon as he got bigger and more headstrong. 

I did find the time to date. My taste in men hadn’t improved significantly. My first semi-serious boyfriend after my ex turned out to be a controlling jerk, and after I dumped him, he would not stop calling, texting, hounding me online, coming to my job, and showing up at my house. It was so bad that I had to get a restraining order.

Then he kidnapped me. I try my hardest not to think about those days I spent trapped in his basement with the padlocked door and the barred windows while he alternately professed his undying love and then proved how diseased that love was. I’m not sure how it took the police so long to figure out where I was, but both my kidnapper and I could see the lights and hear the sirens when they pulled up to his house. That was when he grabbed his shotgun and forced me to run with him into the woods behind his house. 

I gave up when I twisted my ankle and fell to the ground, refusing to move no matter how many times he yelled and thrust the gun at me. I guess the first K-9 to come running and growling at him forced him to give up, because he ran off farther into the woods. The dog ran after him. So did its handler. I suppose it was dark enough that everyone else who followed also stayed hot on his trail instead of noticing me, which meant there was no one surrounding me when the gunshot rang out. 

It must have been you, Fate, who gave me the willpower to pick myself up onto my hands and knees and crawl out of those woods when I heard that blast. I can’t think of how else I would have snuck back into my own house, tended to my bleeding palms and shins, then taken all the cash I had saved along with my passport and bought the first plane ticket out of the country. 

I could have done without the nightmares. I also could’ve done without the guilt. I’ve glanced at my ex’s social media every few months or so, though, and it looks he has finally stepped up to be the parent our kid needed all along. To judge by the smiling family photos he’s posted with my parents, it looks like they’ve also stepped up as grandparents. 

I’m happy to have stepped down as a people-pleaser in private and am only one for pay only now in my role bartending at a beach resort, ignoring the male customers when they get too flirtatious and limping home to a bungalow that might be a little rundown but is mine and mine alone. It’s been a hell of a journey, but I can’t help but thank you for the destination, Fate.

It was my absolute pleasure, dear. Nothing gives - gave - me greater job satisfaction than to press, press, press on the lump of coal that was an individual’s life until it had no choice but to become a diamond. Such a shame that all the plaintiffs in that class-action lawsuit couldn’t find the same beauty that you did!

[questioningyourfate]

A Fair Deal

Fate back to “celebrate” lawyers and the silver-tongued folk who inspired them…looks like the lawsuit against me might get stalled out, since you-all mortals and your insurance company can’t retaliate for acts of God when I’m not worshiped anywhere near enough to be considered one!

Dear Fate,

When I was young and naive, I ran into the most striking being out in the woods. They asked for my name, I unthinkingly gave it to them. I didn’t figure out that they weren’t human until I realized I was lost with no concept of who I was or how to find myself again.

I did the only thing I could: I rebuilt myself from scratch. I made myself a new name, found some friends, made a modest fortune, and gave my wealth where I could. I spent my free time stalking the woods, hoping to learn the location of my identity thief. 

Finally, I tracked the creature down. Under the cover of starlight, I followed them to their home. I slept concealed in the underbrush during the day and watched their village at night. I pricked my ears up whenever one of the fair folk would call to another. After a week of being scratched by branches and brambles and subsisting on berries and morning dew, I heard a voice sing out a fantastical name…and I saw the thieving Fey turn around in response to it.

I wasted no time in confronting the creature. How horrified their eyes were when their friends and neighbors fled but they themself were bound in place by my repeating their name, over and over and over! They begged, they pleaded, they promised to return my name to me if I would only give back theirs. I’ll admit that most of my tarrying was out of desire to savor the being’s sudden change of heart (if they even possess such an organ), but then I became contemplative. 

“I have no need of the name you took from me anymore,” I finally told an instantly grief-stricken fey. “As much as I’ve desired to share my good fortune with those who brought me into the world, I shall have to trust that they forged ahead without me. I have a new home now, however” - and here I pinned the creature in place again with a repetition of their name - “and as long as you leave its denizens alone, never to interact with any of them in any manner, I shall take your name and the location of your own home to my grave.” 

The fey quickly agreed, and so I let them go free. My friends and neighbors have been unaccosted by the fair one ever since…but now, the ones who suffered losses of their own selves, spouses, and children want their own form of restitution. I am being constantly hounded for the creature’s personal information, and no matter how I explain that our land is only safe as long as my knowledge remains the same, still these desperate souls pester me at my waking and sleeping hours for the secret I dare not part with. 

I tried to find the creature again in hopes of settling for the original offer, but that damnable being and their whole village have vanished without a trace. Thus I ask, Fate: could you either grant me the explanation that will let me live in peace from my fairy-pocked fellows or permit me one last face-to-face with the fair one?

First you lose everything, then you gain everything, and now you want to lose everything again, eh? I’ll agree, it is frustrating at best to be tied down with the burdens of making so many decisions so many lives depend upon, knowing that, in the end, someone will be disappointed. 

You made your deal, and now, the decision is yours as to whether you will honor it…or risk the consequences of breaking your word. Though if you do, I know a certain legal team who might be looking for a new case soon, and I’ll admit that it would tickle my fancy greatly to pit them against your fair-faced “friend”...

[questioningyourfate]

A Ritual Sacrifice

Fate here to remind you, as the others in my Meddlers Anonymous meetings regularly remind me, that it’s not all about one individual’s needs as an individual but how those needs can be addressed for the collective benefit of the group…even if that individual’s needs do happen to be both more interesting and more consequential.

Fate,

Ever since I was a child, I was destined to have issues. My mother was wonderful during the timespans when she had energy - buying gifts, taking me on shopping trips, going to all the amusement parks in town, pulling me out of school to take me to Disneyland and Disney World for those weeks - then she’d crash and withdraw to her bedroom for another few weeks, sometimes months.

My father spent almost all of his waking hours at the uni observatory he worked for, and when he was home, he was poring over images taken by the telescopes, making sure he hadn’t missed anything in the skies that would prove the complicated theory he’d developed about the cosmos. He was a good dad when you could show that your interests overlapped with his, though, so I learned all I could about the solar system, the Milky Way, and our neighboring celestial bodies as early as I could once I realized Goodnight Moon was getting too boring for him.

That didn’t stop the rituals. I also learned the basics about germ theory in kindergarten, and while most of my peers struggled with the mere basics of bathroom hygiene, I became obsessed with singing the ABCs ten times as I was washing my hands, having been told that only once was enough to kill an “adequate” amount of germs. Adequate?! I wanted them all dead! Even taking away my recess and explaining to me that other kids needed to use the bathroom, too, wouldn’t make me budge. It wasn’t until the teacher explained to me that the kids who did need to use the bathroom were doing so on the carpet and that that was creating a whole lot of germs that I tore myself away from the sink, though not after insisting on adding, “Now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me” before I did.

Slightly less problematic were my other demands, such as my need to drink exactly one eight-ounce glass of water between eating one type of food on my plate and another to make sure no remnants of the one’s taste polluted another, my insistence on unlacing and relacing my shoelaces three times before I’d put the shoes on for gym class (my gym teacher had laced them once, gotten the holes misaligned on one shoe, and I’d demanded to do it my way ever since), and my rigorous devotion to the schedule I’d created for rotating my stuffed animals in and out of bed so that no one of them would feel left out. My babysitters quickly learned that trying to convince me to do any of my routines any differently was a lost cause, and they all put up with it until my dad would come home, by which time I was usually in bed. 

One night, however, my dad came home early by his standards, all fired up because he’d finally been able to get his hands on a copy of the VHS tape that had been circulating around his department, and he was eager to watch it so he could add to the critiques. It was Armageddon. He practiced his critiques on me as we watched it. I absorbed almost none of what he said during the movie, only asking him when it was over how likely it was that an asteroid that size would crash into Earth and destroy all life as we know it. 

I can’t ever forget his response. “Not likely,” he said, once he got over his irritation at having been interrupted, “but because Earth’s gravity is sufficient to pull an asteroid that large in and not have it burn up in the atmosphere, not impossible, either.” 

I didn’t even have to ask him whether it would be possible for Bruce Willis and co. to launch a mission to the asteroid to break it up before it passed the point of no return, since he’d returned to the rest of his rant proving exactly why such a mission could never take place. All I knew, deep down in my unconscious mind, was that I needed to do my part to keep Earth’s gravity from sucking in any passing large asteroids. 

Ever since, I have been unable to eat any foods that would put me over my strict calorie-limited diet. I have not bought new clothes since I stopped growing, unable to bear the burden of eventually filling our landfills with even one unnecessary ounce of excess mass. I only do my grocery shopping at the latest hours of the night to avoid the blood and scarring from the way I must literally bite my tongue in order not to scream at fellow shoppers who are - how to put this kindly - tossing the highest-calorie foods into their carts, berating them that if a species-destroying asteroid craters into the Earth, it will be all their faults for increasing Earth’s gravity well.

I have taken physics and astronomy from professors more invested in my education than my father. I know consciously that my personal restrictions aren’t doing a thing. I have heard that there are others with similar issues, that they spend their time cleaning their homes or advancing scientific knowledge or refusing to rest until they have given away a set amount of money. I know they are as damaged and disturbed as I am, Fate, but for goodness’ sake, if you had to burden any of us with these inexplicable demands upon ourselves, why couldn’t you have given me a useful one like the more prosocial sufferers have?

You say I burdened you unnecessarily, but have you noticed any species-destroying asteroids hurtling straight through the Earth’s atmosphere to destroy all mortal life as you know it recently?