Fortune Teller

I was finishing graduate school filled with emotion and a love for fortune cookies. My emotions were equal parts good and bad from a mix of the roommates I had moved away from, the relationship I was in, and my pending move to the penultimate check-box before my eventual career. At some point, I had purchased a generic grocery store box and was making those cookies count, limiting myself to 1 a day.* 
One day, I must have opened one, and being dissatisfied with it, I opened a second. The dissatisfaction came about because it had been a rough year with the roommates as well as a tough year for a lot of relationships and besides I was tired of my PhD program and wasn't feeling like I was a considerate or graceful person; instead I mostly felt that I was angry for a large measure of my time. When reading the second fortune, I was equally dissatisfied as my family and I were often on the outs based on the above-mentioned mostly internal struggles I was having which were projected onto them; I wanted to be as far away from them as possible and was considering this as reality. In short, I felt like I was being mocked by La Choy. Part of my reconstructed memory consists of eventually sharing the fortunes with my boyfriend who was intimately aware of all of my terribleness. I laughingly joked that these were the farthest from the truth possible, and was met with an affirmation (albeit sarcastic) of both being most definitely false! I can imagine that I laughingly made a face as I numbed my vulnerability at the external perception reality check. {Here is where I will insert a statement of how much I detest sarcasm, because even in jest, usually sarcasm is just a half-effort to hide a hurtful truth.} Regardless of how everything went down in reality, it obviously mattered to me that I had become opposite of those fortunes. Stubbornly and angrily, I saved them wondering if they really weren't true.
"You have natural grace and great consideration of others."
"You are deeply attached to your family."

They've been on that mirror for almost three years now. In the hurt of those two things not being true, and wanting them to be true so badly, eventually they have become more true than not. In reminiscing about these fortunes, I smile knowing that I got out of that ball of knotted-angry-pent-up-anxious-stubborn independence and moved towards the person I wanted to be. I got here slowly. Without realizing it was happening, I would see those slips of paper, remember that sting of them being false, and ask myself if those things were still false. The truing of them didn't happen through any deliberate action on my part, just keeping them present was enough for them to eventually work their way in. Honestly, I think the family one was true, I was just actively fighting it, and the consideration one was dormant because I was exhausted with life. Also, I'm just plain stubborn and wanted to prove the falseness wrong. 

They still cling to my mirror. I'm hoping that others who see them don't muse on my supposed egoism, but even that threat won't motivate me to remove them. I believe the art of becoming is an art, and if the sting of a false fortune can be the arbitrary art that readjusted me to a desired outcome, so be it. 

*I no longer pursue fortune cookies outside of Chinese restaurant visits. I also claim these fortunes were a fluke and have not taken a fortune seriously since. 

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