awake again.

Yeah, I know, I'm always awake at this time of night, not doing anything productive at all...

So at first he's happy. How ya doin', how's your day, all that. Then he starts with the "I just want you to be happy...". No big deal, except what followed is what usually follows. The whole spiel about how I deserve more, how I'll eventually find someone better and live a happy, normal life as a liberated woman with 2.5 kids and a blue Volkswagen Bug in the driveway. Someplace in suburbia. He says he "knows this will happen". I don't discredit that; hey, psychic powers are cool in my book. Here, though, we run into the little problem of fate.

I told him that when you "know the future," you should be able to use that knowledge to change the outcome. I think fate is something that, on some level, you can change. There are at least two paths to choose, if not more. Some people believe that fate is unchangeable; I don't think I can. I'd be done. It's like finding out the murderer in a good mystery before you're through: there's really no point in going through all the in-between after that. If somewhere, someone or some entity knows the time, date, and means of my death and what kind of impact I'm going to have on my little chunk of the world, the adventure of it all is lost. Sure, I settle into my little patterns, as does everyone else, but I like my adventure. I like unexpected twists and turns.

So he asks me if I've ever just wanted all responsibilities to disappear, so I could just lie down, close my eyes, and die. Once, I did. Once, I tried. Obviously it didn't work, mostly because I didn't do my homework beforehand, but I truly thought I was going to die. At the time, I was almost fine with that. It was what my actions showed I wanted, anyway. Since then I've discovered that life means something, even if you don't do anything particularly good or important with it. I want to see where the road ends, is all. And I want to be surprised when I get there.

I used to be a fatalist. I'm not anymore. I may not be able to change his fatalistic outlook on things, but maybe I can show him something worth living for. And maybe, if he's not willing to change a supposedly inevitable outcome, I can change it. And he will be surprised.