Have you ever wondered just how much the Universe is capable of conspiring to make something happen…to make something come true? To bring two people together…

When you’re chalking things up to the Universe, do you include the good, bad and everything in between? Must you? Do you need to experience the bad, to get to the good? Does it ALL come together to get you to your happy ending? Is there some kind of grand plan that plays out?

I’m going to tell you a little story about a girl. She’ll be typed in this color and she’ll be known simply as the girl. There are also three boys, there’s the ex and he’ll be typed in this color and called the ex. There is also the boy, he’ll be this color and called the boy. Last, and not until the very last part of this story, there will appear a third and final character; the One, and he’ll be typed in this color as the One.

Part One (The Name of It)

Once upon a time…

…there was a little princess (well some would have called her so) who longed to grow up and get married and have her own little princes and princesses.

This is how the girl spent her summer vacation days as a child; setting up her play house on her family’s two-level deck, sometimes she watched the love story of Luke & Laura on TV’s General Hospital, or she’d set up her Barbie doll house so that everything was perfect all the while dreaming of the day that she would be grown-up and she’d have all the same marvelous things, but for real.

She also read a lot of books and loved getting lost in the wonderful stories. She was definitely a little dreamer.

Fast forward several years, the girl was a sweet-sixteen year old. She was still a romantic and still a big reader. She had met someone that she’d fallen head over heels for and for the first time she had felt the chemistry that she’d only read about.

For two years she was smitten with him. After a year together there in their small hometown, they decided to stay together while he went off for his first year of college, and even talked about forever. It was what she’d wanted all her life.

But then around the two year mark the girl started changing, growing and realizing something; she also had other aspirations besides finding and marrying Mr. Right, and all her life, so far, was actually really just a short time in the scheme of things.

The girl wanted to be free and single for her final year of high school. She wanted to do it on her own for a bit. Independence. Then she wanted to go far, far away to a school where they spoke French and she could learn to be a great writer. Once finished she dreamed of traveling, and finally she could find her Prince Charming, or just a really decent, loving guy, and settle down into their life together.

C’est magnifique…non?

So Mr. Right became the ex. She had a very difficult time explaining this to the ex. She wasn’t very good at doing things that she feared might be hurting people. As fate would have it though, around that time the boy came along. He was her friend, masquerading as a kind-of confidante, and he’d spent a lot of time making her laugh…at least at first.

And she confided to him that she wanted to spend her last year at home single and unfettered, having fun with her friends. The boy acted very supportive. He encouraged her to cut her ties with the past and move forward. He was there for her as she’d messily broke things off with the ex. He cheered her up when she was upset, visiting her at work, being silly and entertaining everyone there.

Then things changed. What had started out as friendship was tested when the boy told the girl that he had a crush on her. The feeling wasn’t really mutual; she was enjoying being friends.

Just as things were about to get awkward the boy said the magic words and changed the trajectory of the girl’s life. You’re wondering what he could have said, aren’t you?

Let’s take a moment to tell you a bit more about the girl; she was a caring person who felt compelled to help others in need. She cried fairly easily especially over injustices, and still, though somewhat worldly, she was quite naïve in many ways. She worried about how she was perceived by the world, and she absolutely would not tolerate being pegged as a snob. To her, that was a very low blow that she would go to great lengths to disprove.

It is, to this day, unsure how the boy knew the perfect magic words to say to the girl, but somehow he did. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was his diabolical plan, or maybe it was prodded by the Universe? But one day, when no one else was nearby, he said to her,

“You’d never like a guy like me.” Her facial expression seemed to be just the response he needed as he delivered the fatal wallop, “You only like big football players.”

(It’s important that we note here that he was directly and purposefully describing the ex.)

As his words sunk in, she literally felt called to action. She could not be that girl! She would not. He was obviously challenging her, and she took the bait, you might say. She would show him that she was not like that.

She believed that all she had to do was go out with him and if that was what she had to do then she’d do it. We can take this opportunity to reiterate that she was quite naïve in ways, and although it came from a truly genuine place of decency, it was so very, very misguided. Had she laughed it off or gotten indignant, gotten up and left him sitting there, who knows what, might have been different?

We will never know if that was the one stab at things that the boy would ever have taken, or if he would have dogged her persistently using every trick he could come up with, until he wore the girl down and she relented.

But he didn’t have to, not at this point anyway. And she was determined to prove that she was not the kind of girl who would discriminate, and only go out with a certain type of guy, or worse – only one who was good enough for her. So…they started dating.

It didn’t take long for it to become apparent that they were, alas, not a match. It wasn’t because he didn’t fit the big, football player description. It certainly was not because she felt she was too good for him. It was for several reasons, but those weren’t two of them.

Her life was starting to spin out of her control. She hadn’t trusted her instincts. Inevitably the girl began to wonder why she’d ever broken up with the ex. They had gotten along well and really had fun together.

Currently she was beginning to fear that she had made a mistake in being anything other than friends with the boy. But bridges had been crossed…and then burned…and things were about to get a lot messier, too…

Obviously this is debatable, but the Universe does seem to throw people into your path, or shake things up, right at the most amazing, and also awful, times. Could it all really be part of that grand plan?

Next post: Part Two (The Shame of It)

— Raina K Morton November 25 2014

*Title from the 2000* song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” by Nine Days
**The color coding is purely for identifiable reasons & whimsy, anything else is a coincidence**
***This author claims all rights to this story about a girl in all its parts***