January 2020.

Another day had passed by. And another evening I was eating alone.

I had decided to take myself to the beach. I was helpless from my country on fire and my own personal grievances. I had been asking for someone or something to restore my faith.

“We gotta be ok” I said to myself. But I needed to feel it.

I needed a change of scenery. So I went to the Northern Beaches. Sam and I had always wanted to move there.

I stayed in a humble place, an Air BnB (because that’s normal these days. Although confusing to my old soul) and I went down to the beach a couple of times.

The second night I went to have dinner at Warringah mall. A place I had absolutely no idea about. I sat in the foodcourt watching young boys look at pictures of girls on Snapchat. Half naked girls. No conversation between any of them. Just eyes on screen, looking at eye candy when what they really needed was some severe soul food.

After all this observing, judging, trying to search my heart and soul about how we could fix this society and what it had become I realised I had completely forgotten where I had parked my car.

I spent about twenty minutes wondering around the car park until I finally found a security guard. He was of a Persian descent by the looks of it and he had a cross carved in the back of his hairline.

He told me not to be worried or feel dumb. This was the third time this had happened today. Despite my constant apologies. Is this what trauma does? Make you believe ether asking for help from another human being is a crime? That’s how it had felt for the past 18 months.

After our searching with no success he called someone else to come help. He said that we needed a buggy to drive us around.

The boy who approached us in the buggy was young, handsome but already not my type. He had a pirate tattoo on his leg, a little too much for me at this point. It wasn't like the Madagascar penguin tattoo that Sam was going to get with the knife in his hand. Yeah that was slightly violent. But there was character, humour and some slight sort of innocence attached to it.

The boy seemed nice. He was studying journalism, because it would allow him the freedom to travel. He was young. How could I blame him? Perhaps getting it out of his system would allow for him to one day settle down with a girl and not second guess his choices in life.

We spoke a lot. Nothing of real importance. Maybe there was some flirtation. But the strangest thing was at the end of our meeting.

We were about to give up on finding my car. I was actually beginning to panic. So he called his colleague on the walk talky.

“Hey! Can you look for a white Holden Astra on the bottom level where you are?” He gave her my number plate.

We waited. And she picked up.

“Um.. so this is hilarious but her car is literally parked right next to yours.”

He and I instantly went quiet. If only there was a dash cam at the front of his buggy to capture this moment it would have been hilarious. Perhaps he could save himself a world of trouble in journalism and just film himself driving ladies around the car park for a reality tv show perhaps.

But it was hilarious. And sure as day when we went to the bottom of the car park my car was parked next to his car. The number plate read “Lee”.

No other cars around. Just ours.

Although this remarkable coincidence, a wink from God if you will, reminding us that we are not in control whatsoever; Lee did not see this as a moment to ask for anything more from me and neither did I.

Fate can only take you so far.

But then again we’d already understood each other in the first five minutes. He was a young boy looking for freedom. And I was a girl. Lost in a carpark.

But this isn’t where my story had begun. My journey into self discovery has started way before all this. This was just another part of it. To remind me that my destiny maybe wasn’t my own.