Allison's Archives

What is red found home on the tender parts of my joints. I had woken up one morning to its existence without invitation or explanation. Then again, fate does not explain. In fact, fate is what we call the things we cannot explain. 

It, like everything else, had been such a harmless thing to begin with, like an accessory I had picked up on vacation. I recalled when I had first learned of its origins, sprawled across my childhood bedroom with my mother exhausting page after page to get me to sleep. Stories have a way of auditioning for your life. 月老 (yuè lǎo) was his name. The old man under the moon. The god of love and marriage. Just like every deity with a self-prescribed purpose and defining tool, 月老 had an endless ball of red string at his disposal, unraveling before his judgment until he deemed it time to cut and knot. A delicate occupation, an intentional calling. Behold—the one who tied red strings on the ankles of those fated to meet!

I hadn’t thought too much of it then, simply recognized that an old lullaby had morphed into logistics, and carried on with my mundane, grown life. I made the bed and unloaded the dishwasher. Went to work and did my groceries. What is red made itself comfortable on the tender parts of my joints. Then, more appeared: Tethered to different fingers, looped twice around ankles, gently tugging at my elbows. I showered their existence with my ignorance and repeated my mundane, grown life, careful not to trip over them. 

Eventually, like everything else, they became hard to set aside and demanded my attention. Red strings, a whole network of them, crisscrossing like a poorly-woven tapestry, leading into the distance, leading me to people, places, and prophecies. Yellow brick road, move aside please; there is a new player in town. 

I took it upon myself to follow one of them. Then another. As time ran ahead of me, I followed every string and glowed scarlet with importance, awed by all the things that demanded my encounter. Oh, how alive I felt to be wanted! To be needed! To be lassoed by forces so far into the fog! 

It did not take long before truth reared its head, serpent tongue hissing: That fate does not discriminate. The red strings bound me to lessons as stubbornly as they bound me to loves. It wasn’t easy to distinguish between the two; I had assumed that if I was tied to something, surely it would be good for me. I had confused connection with meaning, mistook persistence for proof. 

Sometimes, what is only meant to hold you gently grips you instead. The string that tethered me to that one boy cut into my skin rather than adorned it. The thread that led me to that one job coiled around my veins and tried to rewrite who I was. The strand that held onto me and that one place threatened to make a home out of my tongue. Even then, I obeyed the red string. Surely, what makes you bleed is worth staying for. Surely, the red string has its reasons. But fate cannot be explained. Cannot have its reasons. All the red string does is bring me to people, places, and prophecies. What happens next is wholly mine to dictate. 

It is not easy to walk away from things fate has led you to. It asks for some small abandonment of faith and courage scraped from the deepest recesses of your bones. I lift one foot at a time and put the smallest distance between myself and what I know is not meant for me. I watch as the string straightens itself from a puddle of coil. I don’t look back. I don’t listen to the siren song. I don’t care if fate is offended by my boundaries; this string has remained the same length all along for a reason. I walk until there are no longer tears colliding with my bare feet, until my soles are more earth than skin, until there are mountains and oceans with my footprints on them. I hold the red string with my left hand and see how feeble it is, how it sways in the wind. It knows it cannot hold. With my right hand, I snip. 

Never again will I forgo the freedom of choice for convenience. Never again will I leave my life in hands not my own. Never again will I follow a trail of red believing peace lies on the other end. 

月老啊月老，您听见了吗？

I tug. I unravel. I walk in the opposite direction.

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_{The accompanying image (Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1861) serves only as a visual complement to the essay and carries no interpretive or illustrative claim beyond that.}