Chapter 8
Chapter eight
SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
My gut reaction is to laugh at the simplicity of her statement, but there is nothing funny about what she is suggesting. “You know better than anyone that I am unlucky all year long, Monika.”
She shakes her head. “See, that’s where I disagree with you.
Today, yes. I can see how this particular day might be worth avoiding, but every other day of the year is free game.
” I open my mouth to argue, but she quickly amends her statement to add, “Oh, and we can factor in Friday the thirteenths too. Just to put you at ease. I doubt there are more than a handful of those in a year.” She pulls her phone out of her back pocket.
“That’s a dangerous oversimplification,” I say. She ignores me to type something into the search bar. “There’s no telling when my curse will strike. It could be any—”
“Ah, see?” she says and holds her phone up to my face.
“Google says that there are only an average of one point seven Friday the thirteenths in a year. Let’s be cautious and round up.
We’re talking two Fridays a year, and your birthday.
That’s it. The rest of the days are free for you to be an aunt to your future nephew. ”
My shoulders rise and fall as I take an exasperated breath, but before I can start in on explaining for what may be the hundredth time that my bad luck peaks on my birthday, but still hangs around all year long, she cuts me off again.
“Also, before you stormed out of dinner, I wanted to tell you that I found a new way for you to break your curse that I think will actually work, and it’s something that you haven’t tried yet.”
I was completely checked out of this conversation and already preparing to say goodnight so that I could finally walk out the door, but her assertion holds me firmly in place while she searches for something else on her phone.
“Yes, here it is.” She holds out her phone for me to take.
I accept it, heartbeat spiking, but my hope is instantly dashed when I read the title of the article: Identity-Based Behavior: Change Your Life in One Simple Step!
“Hear me out,” she says, refusing to take her phone when I hand it back in her direction.
“I had a feeling that you might react this way when Scott and Gabe finally matched with a baby, so I’ve been researching ways that you could start to see what we see, which is that you are not a danger to yourself or anyone else.
In that research, I came across the concept of identity-based behavior change and did a deep dive into it. ”
My quick glance over the article was more than enough to know that this silly idea will be no match for my affliction, and her continued insistence that I am not dangerous to be around is as exasperating as ever.
She presses forward, again, before I get a chance to shut the entire thing down.
“The concept is simple. A person decides who they want to be, so in your case an uncursed Drew, and then starts living as if they are that person right away. No waiting for Monday, no watching for the stars to align before you start. Just showing up, every day, by running each thought and decision through the lens of who you want to be, instead of who you currently are. It works like a snowball effect, where every tiny decision adds up to big results until you become exactly who you want to be. It’s brilliant, really.
I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before. ”
I shake my head in fervent disagreement but restrain myself from saying just how much I hate the idea, because she deserves my respect after everything she has done for me.
“Maybe that could work for someone with smaller problems,” I start.
“But my curse is not something that I wake up and have the option to choose or not choose every morning. It’s an extension of me that I have no control over. ”
“That’s another thing that you and I disagree on,” Monika argues.
“I think that you are so focused on looking for danger that your curse is actually nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are so busy anticipating bad things that you completely miss out on the good things that happen to you every single day, and what you focus on is—”
“What you attract,” I say, finishing her favorite saying with a grumble. I cross my arms over my chest.
“So, tell me if I am understanding you correctly. You want me to create an alter-ego, Uncursed Drew, as you called her, and then start living as her? And Uncursed Drew is going to be so wildly different from Cursed Drew that the shackles of my curse will magically fall off just in time for my nephew to be born?”
She narrows her eyes at my assessment. “That’s a very basic way to put it, but yes.
If you start doing things that an uncursed person would do, like having friends, going out in public, and not living so small in general, paired with the mental change of looking for good around you instead of bad, I think it just might prove to you that you were never bad luck to begin with.
Then, you can finally start to believe what we have been trying to tell you all along. ”
Her theory, while incredibly similar to everything I’ve already heard a thousand times over from her, Scott, and Gabe in the past, is just different enough that I take a second to consider it.
Could it really be that simple? That breaking my curse never required a special herb tea, a smudge stick, or living in a way to minimize risk that feels painfully similar to being an inmate at a maximum-security prison? That instead, it could simply be broken by a mental reframing of it?
I take the last week as a random sample, to play it back through the lens of me being uncursed instead of cursed, but the theory doesn’t hold up under scrutiny with the daily mishaps that have transpired alone, and it completely falls apart when I take into account the family that almost lost their daughter because of my choice to bang on the glass.
“It’s too dangerous,” I say, and loop my purse back over my head so that I can make my exit. “There is no safe way to test the theory, even if I did believe that it could work.”
“Well, you stormed out before we could explain that we figured that part out too,” she argues, and angles her body between me and the exit so that I can’t leave before she finishes.
“We understand that this won’t work overnight, so we found the perfect place for you to try it out: the retreat.
It’s inside a house, and the itinerary is literally just reading books and doing small trips around Charlotte, which is similar to how you spend your time here anyway.
This retreat allows you to put the theory to the test in a semi-controlled environment.
We weren’t trying to force another trip down your throat, we were trying to give you an opportunity to practice living as Uncursed Drew.
But you started freaking out before we had a chance to explain. ”
“Maybe you should have started with that, then, because it felt a lot like every other birthday back in there to me,” I point out. “I love you, Monika, but I’m going to head home, and you should too. We both have to open tomorrow, so we need to get some sleep.”
She presses her lips together in a hard line as I brush past her to head towards the door. I am seconds from freedom when Monika calls out to me from back where I left her. “You’re a liar, Drew Bailey.”
My hand locks on the door handle as I wince at her words, giving her a chance to reiterate. “You’re a liar. You say that you love them, but you won’t even try one last time to stay in their lives.”
“I do love them which is why I have to do this,” I counter over my shoulder. “I’m the only one who is strong enough to—”
“So you’re saying that Scott’s endless compassion, devotion, and unbelievable level of selflessness when it comes to you is a show of weakness?
His willingness to keep fighting for you, even though he had to bury your father all by himself and come to your rescue while pushing aside his own grief, means nothing? ”
“Don’t forget our mom. I took her away from him too,” I spit back. “It’s my fault that our parents are dead, Monika, so no matter how Scott, Gabe, you, or anyone else feels, I won’t risk being responsible for taking his own child away from him too.”
I am about to take my final step out the door when she plays her last card.
“If you really cared about them, you wouldn’t give up this easily, so which is it? Do you love them enough that you will do whatever it takes to stay in their lives, or are you a liar?”
“I’ve already tried everything—”
“Not everything,” she argues. “So, I ask you again, Drew. Do you love them, or not?”
I shake my head, as every part of me sags with the ramifications of my answer, but I say it anyway. “I love them. More than anything on earth.”
She lifts her chin victoriously. “Then prove it.”