Fate?
A brand new year, a brand new set of weddings to attend. So far I only have three which isn’t too bad and I do adore each of the women so no complaints on that end. I’m helping one of them plan her wedding which is scheduled for October 3rd of this year. Funny thing about October 3rd: my ex and I had set that as our wedding date. It doesn’t bother me that she’s getting married that day. I encouraged it. It just makes me a little nostalgic. For the wedding planning process. Not our relationship. Well, that’s not totally true because I do miss him. I just don’t miss us. But the nostalgia got me thinking about the fight that led to our break up and if there’s a chance that we decide our own fate.
I won’t go into the details of the relationship, but I’ll give ya the basics. We were in the same city half of it and across the country (Rocklin, CA and NYC) for the remainder of it. We laughed a lot (I miss that most). We fell in love as fast as we fell out of it. The plan was that after he graduated from grad school I would move to wherever he got a job and we’d start our life together. That did not happen.
We broke up in March of last year. He came out over his spring break. His parents were in Sonoma for the week so we drove over there for part of his visit. We had already told people we were planning on getting married and everyone was supportive. His parents had, at one point, commented on our constant bickering, but we brushed it off as a quirky aspect of our relationship.
At the end of the weekend his parents sat us down (with the ex’s permission) and told us that they would love for us to consider getting married at their place in California, the place we were staying the weekend. This place is amazing….so, so beautiful. I was a little excited. We had already figured 10/3 would be our date and now we had the place. It was over a year and a half away and we weren’t officially engaged (although I did try on engagement rings which is as magical as one would suspect), but that didn’t matter to us because we thought we’d be together forever. Funny how things work out.
We got in a huge fight on the two hour drive back to my place. I truly cannot remember what started it. It was one of those fights that scares you. I was so upset, more upset than I had ever been. We were both shook up and I was literally shaking. We talked well past midnight and finally fell asleep, still in love.
The next night we went to meet his friend for dinner. I really liked (and still like as we have kept in touch) this friend. I liked all his friend. He was a good friend-picker. Anyway, I remember sitting at dinner and the ex and I were giving his friend relationship advice, using the previous nights argument as evidence that we were oh so healthy and together. The irony of it still makes me cringe. We were such fools (and I say that in the kindest way…we just didn’t know that we weren’t invincible).
After dinner we dropped ex’s friend off at his apartment. Ex told me that he was going to go inside and grab a book and he’d be right back down. After he was up there for 8 minutes, or maybe it was 7, I don’t know, I honked the horn (the car was running and I was in the middle of the street…had I known he’d be up there that long, I would have parked). He came out right after the honk not because he had heard the honk, but because he was already on his way down. When he got in the car he looked at me and lightly said, “That wasn’t you that honked the horn, was it?”
ENTER FATE
This was a “Frost Moment” for me. As I think back on it, there were, “…two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” Terribly sappy, I know, but let me explain. I knew, KNEW, that if I answered, “No, no, I didn’t honk the horn,” that everything would be fine. But I made a conscience choice to tell the truth. I don’t know if I wanted to push his buttons or if I was just being truthful, probably a little of both, but either way, I set off a chain reaction when I replied, “No, that was me.” The good thing is, and again, I won’t get into details, I do not regret honking the horn for reasons I still stand by today. He, on the other hand, doesn’t like horn honking so much.
The fight that ensued was the fight that ended our relationship. Now, I do know that, if the honking of a horn inspires a fight so bad that the relationship falls apart, there were probably more problems lurking in the background and we weren’t as committed to our future as we thought we were. I get that. That fact was a great comfort to me throughout the healing process. But what if I had answered the other way? I have thought about that and I think we were fortunate to learn early on. If we had to find that out after we’d moved to some city together, well, that would have been unfortunate. But what if we hadn’t found out? What if that was a fluke fight but we broke up and that’s it? Did I decide my fate?
Looking back, if I actually did decide my fate, I am okay with the outcome so far. Like I said, I miss him, not us. It’s just interesting to look at that single moment now, almost a year later, and still recall, with detail, the decision making process that went on in my head prior to admitting that I honked the dreaded horn. I can’t help but feel that I chose a path that night. Can’t wait to see where it leads me.
