That One Time the Plan Went Awry, AKA All the Ways I Tried to Be Done

Lately I’ve been contemplating “free will” and how it doesn’t seem to be quite as cut and dried as we might like to think. We consider ourselves masters of our domains, but in reality, free will might only apply to the minor considerations.

I can choose what to eat, or what to wear and what show to watch or even who I might date, until my free will crosses into fated territory.

Below is a story of how hard I tried to get away from what’s unfolding. Not because I’m unwilling to do the work I came here to do, but because this isn’t how I wanted it to go.

I also want to note that it reads like a lot, because going through it, it was a lot. It felt like being chained to something I kept wanting to walk away from and getting pulled back to, so I kept trying to understand. On the other side of it now, I am at peace, and relieved, but it was not at all a fun process to go through or write about. Take that as you will. Now let’s go.

In October I left a 21-year marriage and moved into a house that itself was a pretty fortuitous—you might say “fated”—purchase. I had a vague sense at the time that I had “until spring,” to be ready, but ready for what?

I still don’t know, so I tried to hit all the marks: deep pantry for societal unrest, trauma work because I don’t want to walk unhealed into what comes next, health because a sound body matters when the work is important, work - getting content laid out for the year in case I was too caught up to be present as much. (Guess what? That’s happening now.)

I had a tentative plan for my next year. Spring was for healing and integrating. I’d done most of the marriage processing while in the marriage, but I wanted to tackle whatever came up after I was out.

Through spring and summer, I was planning to be working on health, and my findings there prompted the creation of another website I’ll share soon.

My plan -scowls at the universe in general- was to spend that first year healing and working and then think about re-integrating the social sphere. I have no interest in dating or interacting with people. I don’t know who I am right now, and I am not ready to be seen if I can’t see myself clearly.

Beginning in November, the journey started to make itself known. By December, my entire life was at risk of transforming through mystical experiences I have yet to write about. This was a time of the most intense trauma work I’ve undertaken in about 7 years of dedicated work. It was a full time job, and I went at it wholeheartedly.

I spent the first half of my adult life surviving. I didn’t want to waste one single minute of the next half on anything less than what I actually came here to do.

Then came February. Oh, February. If I had only known…I might have tried harder to avoid you.

As I was integrating what happened at the end of 2025, I was being visited by visions of a man I’d seen in a dream in 2020. I’ll write about him separately, but it was a love so exquisitely beautiful it nearly destroyed me, because we don’t get that kind of love here.

So this sets the stage for what unfolded next. Haunted by the man, Curtiss, again, I asked the tarot:

Will this love find me in a body I can hold?

And I drew Knight of Pentacles, The Womb (an extra in my deck, means how it sounds, something is gestating, not yet born), 4 of Cups. This is an extremely meaningful draw, but it didn’t become apparent until about early May 2026. I’ll write about it separately because that one will take awhile. 😅

So here I am, working on myself, deeply inward-focused, with this newly found Richard Marx obsession going on. If you haven’t read that one yet, it’s important framing for the next 3 months, for the synchronicities I tried to escape, for the pattern I could not see, and a near-total derailment from The Plan According to Megan.

What follows is an inventory of the ways I tried to close a door that fate seemed to insist on blowing back open. Some day, I will show him this, and I want him to understand that it was no easy thing for me, either. Maybe we’ll drink to our shared misery of the process. 😆

Because my entire life is processed by obediently following the path as it unfolds, I took the step. I reached out to The Man, and then spent the next three months scrambling to take it back because this is not where I was headed.

I had no real plan or intention when I sent the text that opened this up. Synchronicities are very common in my life, I follow them, I generally don’t question it too much, life unfolds. Simple as.

But this…whatever it was, it caught me up in a blender and stole my focus. I was still working and launching and doing what I do, but underneath it a constant thread of distraction that frequently stole the show.

I didn’t want to be thinking about a boy for crying out loud. But underneath it was more than just some past love, it was a pattern I couldn’t untangle. If you know much about me, you’ll know that I’m like a hound on a scent when it comes to patterns. This is why my work is successful. Autistic pattern processing, ADHD hyperfocus and an innate love for English gave me the ability to weave together seemingly random threads into a cohesive tapestry.

That’s entirely my process and how I make a living.

But this one, this one I couldn’t untangle and it ate at me.

No matter how I poked, examined or contemplated, I couldn’t figure out why the whole stupid ass Richard Marx thing dropped me off near The Man just long enough for me to remember he existed, then drug me back up to Oregon where I wound up going. There was literally no point in the way it unfolded except for this reconnection and the reconnection wasn’t giving me any data to work with.

I had endless work and A Plan, I didn’t need this. So I tried to get away, several times over the 3-month arc. I present to you a cohesive timeline, thanks to my determination to journal my way through life.

1. 2/23/26 I processed the past, I released it with The One I Never Grieved, “And to that boy who has now grown into the fullness of a man, I see you, I honor how you shaped so much that came after, and I release you to the wilds of a future yet unwritten.”
2. 3/11 I sent him a parting gift: “if this is what you meant about rationalizing me out of my emotions, there’s nothing to forgive. we all have paths we have to walk and we both did what we needed to do. i don’t want or need anything from you, just found this and it felt like something worth sharing. i also think i should tell you that it isn’t greedy to want a deeper emotional connection. i think that’s mostly why we exist. a life cultivated to keep out hurt tends to also keep out joy, and the pursuit of joy tends to be worth the pain accrued along the way. anyway, just some thoughts from a friend. i hope you see in yourself the beauty worth pursuing.”
3. 3/13 the dreams of him, sporadic through the reconnection period, returned in earnest, multiple dreams per night.
4. 3/20 I decided to just…stop talking to him for 30 days and let things rest, but things wouldn’t rest. Very similar to the process that began my spiritual “awakening,” for lack of a better word, I had this strong sense that there was something I was missing, and it wouldn’t let me go.
5. 3/30 “How do I get done with this?” (you can’t, it’s gestating, your wishes will be fulfilled, also The Sun ❓) followed by “If I can’t be done with this, what do I DO?” (a transition is bringing 3 parts together, you have to do the work)
6. 4/11 “Can I be done with this now?” (soul purpose, ego conflict must end) followed by “How does this end?”
7. 4/13 “How do I end this?” (it’s fated, be patient, but it’s your move)
8. 4/15 or so, I decided to unfriend him on the social channel we’d been talking on, a cord cutting if you will.
9. 4/21 I did an unrelated draw and noticed a pattern had been persisting through the cards, so I dug into that more and decided to reach out, after which we had a several-hours conversation and a good resolution.
10. 4/26 I asked him the question I’d known I needed to ask since 3/16 and I felt such relief, it was finally over. I had done what I was put there to do and I could go back to Life as Planned. -scowls at the universe again-
11. 5/4 the damn thing still is nagging at me so I asked the cards for insight into what action I was supposed to take and got Magician, Fool, Chariot. Three major arcanas is a pretty notable answer. Inspired, I took a blank page from the notebook of his I’d happened to have in my stack of old journals all these years and wrote a release before putting it in a ritual fire, carefully including the paper shreds that had torn off with it, so all of it was burned. Whereupon two large pieces of ash flew back out of the fire and landed on the ground, “Not so fast, Megan. You’re not done yet.” -throws up hands in absolute disgust-

Finally, the culmination weekend arrived. I drove to Oregon, had a lovely experience and felt like a major threshold had been crossed, perhaps even the vague “until spring” process. While there, I knew what was left to do to conclude this part of the saga and hopefully return to the plan I’d been working before this Very Strange Detour occurred.

I’d been intending to send the notebook to him—it belongs to him, after all—but it required a trip to town and things hadn’t lined up before the trip. As soon as I returned home, I made a point of getting it in the mail. He knew I had it, so this wraps up a 25+ year chapter and leaves the field open for whatever is unfolding in my own walk, work on the past having been largely completed.

It arrives today, so what happens next is anyone’s guess, but for my part, I’ve concluded that there’s no sense in fighting this. Instead, I’ll just focus on writing this, because it plays a role in the larger Work I am beginning to unfold for you here.

While I don’t know the ending, I do have a pretty strong set of clues I’ll write about in time.

Meanwhile, I’m having some thoughts about free will. 😅