This was a strange realization I had once, I was just reminiscing the time during my undergrad studies. How my friends and I would always hang out between classes and just have fun, and I remembered a time one of my female friends was acting a bit weird. And the reason I even started reminiscing is because I bumped into her again recently, ten years after we all graduated. We didn’t kept in touch all that well, because we drifted apart slowly due to lack of interacting with each other.

But when I bumped into her, she told me how she is struggling. Financially and with her relationships, she has been married three times now. The first one passed away on some accident, the second one left her because he found someone else. This third one is problematic because he is an addict, gambling and alcohol. And she never earned enough money to be independent and to find peace, she is always rushing to make ends meet.

And this reminded me of her background, she was adopted and a very willful person. So at some point she ran away from her adopter parents, and had to go from friends to friends. Then it’s something she mentioned while I was talking to her that triggered an epiphany, she said she feels like she is cursed. Like she was not meant for happiness but to suffer this life, nothing comes easy and even the easy stuff is needlessly hard for her and not other people.

That’s when I remembered, we were in the cafeteria of the school back then. And I was eating my usual Chinese food, chicken and broccoli. Me and her always joked around, so I never took her words serious just sarcastic back and forth dialogues in joking fashion. Then out of no where she asks if I’m done with my plate and if she can throw it out for me, I found strange. Then she says she is hungry, I told her laughingly “well good thing we’re in a cafeteria.”

She wasn’t really laughing, then I was chewing my gum. She said hey wanna dare me that I can eat your gum? I didn’t know what this was but I found it funny that moment. So I have her just to see if she’d do it. And she did! I said ew. And she asked if I can spot her money, that moment I thought she was trying to trick me so I said no. And then I’m guessing she was too proud to ask me further so we went back to class.

Now I’m thinking, I’m usually a generous guy, and I would have given any kind of cash within reach to a friend in need. But her luck was built in such a way that even me, a gullible sucker didn’t give her what she needed. This made me think about all the other people, the ones who seem to be going through life normally, but if you look closer their luck is terrible. Either bad timing or bad location, no opportunities to them but the person right next to them passes. Even if you help the unlucky person, they will get hit with more problems somewhere else. It really makes you think this life runs on fate and your own personal level of luck.