Drawing the Line of Luck

From a very young age, we’re all conditioned to want to be special. We want to stand out from the crowd in some small way. Yes, some people are shy, introverted, don’t feel a need—or a want—to be noticed at all. But really, we all seek out something in ourselves, or in the world, that will make us distinct, even if we don’t want anyone else to notice it.

She used to love it when she had headaches. She would focus on the pounding in her head and try to feel something more. Every coincidence that worked for or against her would be carefully noted down in her memory, proof of being special. Luck did not exist in her world, and if it did she had caused it. Really though, her head never hurt too badly, and if it did, she probably would have taken it as proof that she was even more powerful than she could control.

But where could she draw the line of luck. Because, really, she knew that she was slightly delusional. She held no delusions regarding that. She knew that if she were to do something truly outrageous, like walking out in the middle of the road, she wouldn’t survive. Deep down, she knew that she wasn’t special, at least not in the way she wanted to be. But, she drives up to a stoplight, and the light changes. Her sibling starts complaining about something, and the effect gets worse, or solves itself, depending on her perspective on the issue. 

At this point, it’s getting harder to notice the times the pattern doesn’t fit. Does that lack of noticing mean it’s not happening, that the stars are aligning more times than not? Or was it just another symptom of her well known and documented fantasy?

But then, things started to line up in a different way, interspersed with the usual positive happenstance. She would be thinking of something that she would want to avoid at all costs, and then suddenly it would happen. Good luck, bad luck, bad luck, good. There wasn’t a pattern, it never felt even but with the value of hindsight it seemed to level out. 

She was never struck by lightning. She was never a victim of a shark attack. She certainly never won the lottery. But those little things never stopped whispering in the back of her mind. Every time she walked up to an intersection, just to see the light turn just for her, she thought of it again.