Not Fate

I admit, I have an almost superstitious belief in Fate. (Yes, with a capital F.)
Logically I know there's really no "meant to be," but I keep hoping that I"ll somehow be the exception, that somehow I'll be the one to find a love that's transcendent and so completely "meant to be" that I'll laugh and say, "Can you believe I didn't used to believe?"

(Which is ridiculous, since the superstitious part of me DOES believe, obviously, so I can't say can you believe I didn't used to believe? Whatever. I can't say I'm logical.)

So why am I bringing this up?

Well, a long, long time ago, in a country far, far away (seriously, it was France.) I made my first foray into the world of online dating. I was on nerve.com personals, and while there weren't many people in my area (duh, cause I was in FRANCE), I did get contacted by someone who lived in NYC, because I'd mentioned I was from [Hometown state.]

Well, upon further talking it turned out we'd graduated from the same high school 4 years apart. We talked for several months, but as I was in Paris, and he was in NYC, this had the inevitable ending of ... well... nothing. One day he just stopped returning communications.

Since this was one of my first forays into the online world I was very disappointed, because even though it wasn't a "real" relationship, it was certainly one in which I'd naively invested a lot of psychic energy... all based on this ever-elusive idea of "Fate."

So why did this come to mind now? Well, because my "fake" email address at hotmail is now suggesting that I 'invite' people to do various things and it's pulling up addresses that I've sent messages to in the past. One of those email addresses? Was This guy's email address.

And, huh. I notice something I didn't realize before.... He has an alumni email address. From the school I'm currently attending. In fact, he's a '99. I happen to know a lot of '99s. Huh.

So what do I do? I look him up on facebook naturally. It turns out we have some "friends" in common... both from back in my homestate, and from the school I now attend.

And, oh yeah, he's married. (Good thing, or I might start to think there's something to this whole "Fate" thing after all.)

So it is in fact, Not Fate. Un-Fate? Non-Fate? Even though all these intersections of friends/life/etc would #1) make for a great story, #2) make things seem surely fated. But, they obviously are not.

So what have I learned? Not much, other than I guess I learned it's a small world after all...

Though I'm still a bit disgruntled with Fate lately.