Chance and Destiny

I like to believe in fate. I can't say whether I actually do believe in it or not, but there are some brilliant things in my life that terrify me over how easily they could have just not happened.

How me and my boyfriend met was very much down to chance. We both got involved in a youth organisation, and it would have been so easy for one or both of us to have not joined. My tutor at college encouraged me to join, while he can't even remember why he joined. The first meeting of this organisation was a Saturday, and I work on Saturdays. Again, I could have so easily not made the effort to get that day off work. We'd likely still have met, but that first meeting was more of a social, get to know everyone kind of thing. I might not have caught his eye otherwise.

I didn't appreciate it at the time, but he really made an effort to get in contact with me. It felt kinda stalker-ish at the time, but I'm really glad he did now. It shows me that even back then, he was really serious about me. He knew (or otherwise found out) what college I went to and phoned them up, asking if I had a college email address. I didn't, but he left his email address and asked them to pass it on (which they did, after they phoned up his college to check he actually was a student where he said he was). I emailed him, having no idea what the conversation was going to be about.

He eventually got hold of my phone number too, which again was something I didn't appreciate at the time, but I'm glad it happened now, because it was another way we got talking.

I have to admit that I didn't really like him at the beginning. I was not of the maturity level to have a relationship, even though I was sixteen, and I didn't have the skills to be able to do gentle rejections or anything like that. I had no handle over guys. Meanwhile, my boyfriend would not take no for an answer. He did freak me out quite a bit. There were times when he crossed lines that he shouldn't have crossed, and I didn't handle it maturely either. I don't have the original emails saved (plus some of it happened on a forum which is no longer in existence, where he Googled me and found me), but I do have some of the early ones. I read them maybe once or twice a year, and it's difficult to get my head around the fact that these emails were actually between me and him. It's like they're two completely different people.

I'm way too forgiving in nature. People can do things that really piss me off, but I find it difficult to hold a grudge for very long, even when I want to. It annoys me sometimes, but I like to think part of it is fate. Back then, my boyfriend did some things that would have warranted me never talking to him again. I actually told myself once that I wasn't going to talk again, but obviously I did. I don't think I even lasted a day.

They were dark and embarrassing times. I hate thinking about them and I hate talking about them. I really do find it difficult to think of as me and him back then, and its embarrassing to think about the way we were. Even if I had been ready for a relationship, I'm completely glad I didn't say yes to him. There is no way we'd have what we have now. Although the early days were bad days some of the time, they were necessary, and I'm really glad they happened. If we'd got together from the start, it's unlikely we'd still be together, because we weren't compatible back then, and being together wouldn't have given us the opportunities to slowly change each other.

What I've learnt from this whole experience is to never write anyone off in life. You never know what that person might bring to your life if you let them. If you had told me back then, when I was sixteen, this creepy guy who wouldn't leave me alone was eventually going to become my first boyfriend when I was 21, there was no way in hell I'd have believed you. He pissed me off a lot back then, but the ends justifies the means I suppose, even if it was somewhat accidental. If it weren't for my forgiving personality, then things would have turned out a lot differently, and we'd never have discovered how compatible with each other we actually are, or rather, how compatible we became. He eventually got the message that I wasn't interested in him romantically, so we just kept it as friends, got talking and we ended up changing each other (he taught me to be more self-confident, while I showed him how to not consider himself the be all and end all of everything, and we met in the middle). Over years of talking, I eventually actually did get romantic feelings for him because of the ways we changed and how well we got to know each other.

We talk about it sometimes, how scared I am how it could not have happened. The thing is though, I can't say that there isn't someone out there who is even more suited to me than he is, but fate or chance never threw that person my way. If it had happened that way, my boyfriend now could have been that guy who might be more suited but I never found him. I guess you can't miss what you don't have. It's awful to think of my life without him, but I wouldn't miss him because I wouldn't know him.

When we talk about it, he always says it's destiny. I like that idea. We're so suited to each other, and the circumstances that led to us being together were so long, complicated and unusual that it would have been so easy for it not to happen. If you took away just one component then it could have never have happened. I could have stayed pissed at him and never spoken to him again. He could have been more well-adjusted at the time and taken no for an answer, and never spoken again. Even further back than that, I might not have been able to persuade my parents to get the internet (before me and my boyfriend met) and I wouldn't have had an email address for him to contact me with. I had only recently had my first mobile phone then. What if I'd been turned down for the job that gave me the wages to buy that phone?

My boyfriend tells me it was destiny, it had to happen that way. If things had been different, he would have found a way. I can see how people find comfort in religion, because I'm personally terrified over how easily the best thing in my life could have not happened. The idea of fate is comforting to me, because the alternative scares me too much.