I never did follow-up on my post from July. As luck would turn out, a few days after the gigantic grasshopper landed on my steering wheel, I received an invitation to interview for a job I did not remotely expect to get... and then I got it. I f**king got it. It was like, wait, what? Things happened so quickly, I had some difficulty processing everything. I went from "doing well" to "top 1%-rich" overnight. I don't feel rich, though, because my dad has a million health problems that I'm paying up the nose for, and I also helped my roommate/best friend buy a house. Additionally, I contributed to the political campaign of another one of my close friends, so yeah... Maybe once all these expenses are paid, I'll finally feel wealthy/buy something for myself!
In addition to the gigantic luck career-wise, something even more important and "big" happened to me: I met S. I feel awkward saying he's the one I've been waiting for; I don't want to be disrespectful to those I've dated and genuinely loved. C was one of my favorite people in the world; I can't even describe who he was to me in entirety because he was my everything. Yet, I also know this to be true: as much as I loved C, and as much of a force-of-nature as he was (and as it was for us to meet and spend those years together), I also did not feel like we were "meant to be" in that way. He was my friend, the funny, brilliant and big-hearted human being who was my companion and our third musketeer. When I die, he better be there to receive me into the next world, whether that's a world of unconscious nothings or a traditional "afterlife" or something none of us can even imagine in our humanly state. But he was not "the one."
You see -- as I wrote in my very first post -- just as I always knew the city and neighborhood I was going to live in since I was a child (as well as the type of home I would one day own), I also knew the person I would end up with, even though I had not met him yet. It was always just so clear to me, even when I was 16-17. I knew the church I would marry in, his hair color, his eye color, his occupation, his likes and dislikes, the conversations we would have, his essence. And as much as I have had some amazing friendships resulting from my past relationships, and have even been genuinely in love, I just always knew.
And so, here I am, finally. With the job I've been wanting my entire life. With the one I spent my life searching for. I looked into the mirror the other day, with a few strands of grey hair and the heaviness of the past years weighing in on my once-youthful face, and I thought: things definitely did not turn out as I'd planned, but I did grow up to become exactly the person I thought I would, and exactly as I'd always wanted to be.