The life we didn't choose.

"Truth is powerful, and it prevails." - Sojourner Truth

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There she was lying in the corner weeping, eyes darting with her jaw clenched, motionless in an unbreakable trance.

There she was—the life we didn't choose. She had shared her story countless times with anyone who would listen about how she had been rejected and abandoned. She had spent decades trying to process why we weren’t together.

And to this day, she still could not understand how we chose easier than what was true.

She replayed that last moment - the echoes of her voice breaking while begging to be the one. She constructed a myriad of reasons why she, the life we didn’t choose, had not been good enough. But maybe it was just that her arms couldn’t quite figure out how to grasp us tightly enough to keep us from a journey we would inevitably regret.

It had been decades now since she last slept, recalling the memories of a time when we did nothing but envision her, long for her, and promise ourselves that she would be the remedy to our emptiness that had yet to be filled.

But that light dimmed and our path swayed. She became smaller as the world became louder. The outside voices were adamant that staying with her was impossible instead of ingenious.

And so we forced ourselves to believe what we had never believed in—that we must choose the conventional. There was no need to create. It would require no fortitude. This life we chose would not ask us to bend. It would be simpler.

This journey held no fear, no worries and no risk. We swallowed the regret, hoping no one would notice the pain of unfulfillment within us.

And no one did, except for her.

Her mouth was agape, watching in horror because she had never imagined we would choose to be apart from her. She had known us for so long and in our nakedness. She stripped us bare, had built a home in our dreams and found solace in our thoughts. She kept us company in the nighttime awakenings, where we would contemplate our future together.

We had a passionate love story with her, this life we didn’t choose. It was incomprehensible how quickly we decided it would never be.

So, over time, the desires, suggestions, and demands of that which we lived filled our being, and we slowly fled from her existence. We told ourselves the stories we thought wouldn’t break her heart. We were too busy. We didn’t have the time. We were just too young.

Yet no matter how far we flung her from our mind, she would eventually return to reclaim her space. She knows the truth is that we never could forget her. But we could break her spirit.

We told her we would never get a moment's rest if we stayed with her. We would live in constant judgment of others. This is not the life of the sane. She had to become the life we didn't choose.

Only a few extraordinary souls could ever choose her. Or is it that only a few ever pushed themselves to be that courageous? Only a few would claim her without hesitation.

She stood in the same place we left her, and she watched us for years, seething with anger and crying tears of crimson red blood. She desired revenge upon all who convinced us she wasn’t enough. She prayed nightly that our decision to leave her would send us spiraling through the universe. She cursed us, imploring that we would incessantly feel her absence in every part of our lives.

She swore that one day the unchosen would become the inevitable.

And true to her desire, the moments arrived when the memory of her would slither out of the cage of our subconscious. And under the spell of nostalgia, we would speak of her. Some would laugh and many would question. None ever considered that she was real.

So we locked her up again, reminding ourselves to do better and ensure that the mistake of exposing ourselves never be repeated. We assured ourselves that we had done what was necessary. She had to be erased- she created too much feeling, too much passion and too much uncertainty. The distance became greater and we stood farther away from her love and closer to the drudgery we forced ourselves to pretend was a good life.

We didn't know how inescapable she was.

We missed her presence at every life transition. We thought about her at every milestone, desperately hoping to convince ourselves that leaving her was the right choice. Until her pain became so palpable that it reached into us and choked us, desperate to get our attention once again.

And that is the day when we saw her on the floor.

She had resolved to make us notice her once again. She was going to wake us up, even if it killed her. She would have to be the brave one and do the thing that we could not do so many years ago.

Stay.

Once she saw us, finally seeing her, she stood and then ran. We couldn;t believe she was still here. Waiting. Wondering. Hoping. She had not given up. She held us with her sweat dripping and it poured into our soul, flooded our brains and drowned our senses.

She had come to us on this opposite side of life, in our corner. She was no longer hoping but demanded that we choose her.

We tried to remind her that our union would break the lives, hearts, and expectations of everyone else. We no longer would be what they hoped we should be. The nightmare we had always feared would come to pass. They would walk away.

But she said we would finally live.

Time passed, and the walls did not cave in, nor did the ground swallow us whole. Hand in hand, we finally started building what always should have been. Everything was harder with her, but also so much deeper and stunning that we cannot pull ourselves away. And when our bodies would be fraught with worry, the loud stillness was interrupted by her soft voice whispering, "I'm still here.”

That is when we knew she was never a choice. She was the only. It was us, the people we really needed to be, who were the choice denied.

She waited. We wandered. Until we were confronted by the wisdom that emerges from the passing of time and the stagnation of dreams. We turned our heads forward, no longer thinking about what we would be losing and there we were, face to face with change.

We could no longer hide from her. So we are moving together to a destination that we never knew but had always been ours.

And this is how our life finally begins.

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