Fate…

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

Do I believe in fate?

I’m not sure except that R and I bumped into each other so many times…

Although maybe it was more destiny. Fate means you have no control but destiny is just a prearranged date or meeting that has to happen. Potentially, I was not fated to meet R because I had some say over the result, but we were destined to collide throughout our lives.

So, I had almost completed my archaeological degree and was walking over the bridge in university that separated the union from the lecture halls. I was wearing bright orange trousers with massive flowers on them. Now, unknown to me is that the university was looking at being merged with the university in Carmarthen. And that particular day some of the staff were around from the other university. Including one R, tall with hair going grey he must have cut a hell of a figure. He was going to the gym and well-muscled. For the life of me I wish I had looked up.

I didn’t.

R saw me and stopped to watch. If I had seen him and if, at the time, I had been brave enough then there is a possibility we would have met almost ten years before we did.

But I didn’t.

Then I went back to the same university for my masters. I remember going to the media centre and getting my photo taken for the university card. I remember… And if I had been either ten minutes before or a little after I had put my foot through the door, then it would have been R working the camera. But we missed each other by minutes.

Almost but not quite.

Then years later, I was in a small pub that was connected to a hotel. I was meeting friends and in walked R. I was going through a bad break up but at the time I noticed him. Almost completely grey now with a lean frame and dressed in a suit, he took my breath away.

Oh my, I thought.

I sat next to him.

My almost ex turned up and I ended up back at his and not in a great place. I forgot about R.

I forgot…

A year later I was with the a nice guy who had moved SO far away. I wanted to go to a club in Swansea.

“I can’t take you,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t have the confidence or bravery to go alone.

“I have a friend who can take you,” he said.

“Who?” I asked.

Of course, it was R. He was with someone else, but he looked after me. We met up once a month and I would go to the club and dance and have fun. We became friends and his other relationship failed. I started to spend more time with him. And then one day I didn’t go back to Tregaron.

Three years later we married.

Was that fate? Was it destiny?

I dunno, but it definitely feels like it was something.