Choice

May 5, 2021

I’ve sat down to write this…I don’t even know how many times, and every time I start, I stop.

Right now, sharing what’s on my heart and my mind would cross over a line that I’m not willing or ready to cross. Ya know… it’s hard to find that balance between self disclosure and over-sharing. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s just another story that I’ve created after years of conditioning. It all goes back to stories.

Have you ever had someone argue against your reality? Hell bent on proving you wrong and in turn invoking doubt within yourself of who you are, what you stand for, and everything that makes up you?

It’s an indescribable thing really. And when I start to explain it with words, it’s just not there. There is literally no way to capture what it does. For years, I was fixated on finding a reason, a meaning, some explanation as to why on Earth this even exists. And beyond that, such an intense need to not only preserve me and who I am, but also get others to see. Get the one that made me doubt my entire being to understand me in some way, shape, or form.

And then I just stopped. I waved my white flag in the air and surrendered to being who I was told I was. I surrendered to what I was told I wanted for my life. I just stopped. I stopped being. I went through the motions and tried…genuinely tried to be that. I tried to be everything I was told to be, everything I was told I already was…and surrendered to what I thought I should be. And it just didn’t work.

What I have learned is that people are who they are. They see what they see. They say what they say. They do what they do. Sometimes they change. Sometimes they stay the same. But there is no control over any of that from an outsider. And sometimes having an intense desire to get them to see or hear something different, is only doing a disservice to self because the impact falls back on self, not the other way around. Unmet expectations and an attachment to some outcome that may or may not ever exist. There is no just being.

It starts and ends with self. Honoring who I am, and who I am not. Trusting myself and now allowing anyone else to create my self doubt. I may not be right, I may get it wrong, but I will do that on my own terms and never on someone else’s.

Choosing my life.

Choosing it for all that it is, all that it is not, and all that I am creating it to be.

“…And she found riches in the most unlikely places– love in herself and happiness in the poetic chaos of life.”

– Becca Lee