Choice

(I know this is cheating, I wrote this a while ago, but looking at it today, I really wanted to put it here.)

Choice. That’s a heavy word, so heavy in fact, that most of us seem to ignore it than want to deal with it. It’s probably the best thing about being a person, about being human – that you have a choice. Even our ability to love isn’t as important, because you have to choose to love – that’s when it matters; when you love a person despite the all-too-real stuff that slaps you in the face after you’ve declared your feelings.
Choice. That is, after all, the freedom that God gave us. I’m no religion expert, but somewhere between Sunday school and the numerous non-denomination but mostly Catholicism-based religion movies I’ve watched in my lifetime, I’ve come away with that (and the fact that, like everything else, there seems to be numerous loop-holes in the contract that determines whether you go to heaven or hell). That, after the incalculable blessings He bestows on us each day – most of which we don’t even notice – He can still bear to let us decide, give us the choice of whether we will succumb to His will or not. Mostly, we choose not to.
Choice. I’m not sure why this word kept creeping up on me today. I’ve been feeling good, over the past week. A bad moment here and there … but the night before yesterday I was the worst I’ve been in a while. (Actually, I can actually say when the last time was I felt that awful because it’s when I wrote in my journal – about two weeks back.) But what does me mourning my dad’s death have to do with choice? If I even claimed to know that right now, I’d really be stretching it, but I hope it comes to me soon.
For now, I’ll talk about this six-letter word that’s been pounding at me. I guess for me, personally, what jumps out is that wherever you are in life, you’re there because of choices you made along the way that led you there. You’re also there because you choose to stay there. Even when there are obstacles, you choose to carry on, stay put, or carve out a new path for your self. It’s all choice. It is that simple.
I guess the biggest reason about hating, hating, the whole concept of choice is that, it places responsibility solely in our hands. In the end we can’t blame anyone but ourselves for situations we land up in.
I don’t have a car ’cause I chose to be lazy and not do things on time, now it’s the bane of my existence to try and sort all that out.
I’m overweight ’cause when I could have turned it around, I refused to look at my body too closely and see that all that junk food and alcohol, and bad habits were ruining my body – only now it’s not as easy as when I was a teen to get it back.
I’m here, right now, right here, like this – the good and the bad. Because I chose it all. It’s like when people speak to me about having followed my passion – to work in the media industry. And the question of whether fate chose this path for me. This destiny. Well! When times are hard, which they have been, it’s been my choice, my decision to stick with this path. And it’s been at those times that I chose it, kinda like being in love, as I mentioned earlier.
Of course, there’s times when you find yourself in a certain situation, not due to your own doing, but due to someone else’s. I know that, I have a lot of issues with my dad and, as a result, with men. I’ve always looked to him to help me sort these out. You know, hoping, one day we’ll have that tear-jerking conversation that we’ll let me into his heart a bit more, explain for me who he really is, how he feels, how he thinks, and why he chose to act the way he did. And then, like magic, I would go out and conquer the world – and the man of my dreams. Silly, I know, but I think subconsciously, that thought has always been there.
I had a cathartic moment several years ago, when I realised that my dad is my dad, and he’s a real person with his own issues, and I had to stop expecting him to show me love the way I wanted him to. The only way, I would accept it from him.
I decided to open myself to him as he was, and accept him as he was, and that helped me love him more than I ever thought I would. But that still made me more vulnerable – but that’s how I learnt to have a bit of a tough skin.
The change in tactic, for lack of a better word, also led to me expecting an awareness from him of too. And of the wrongs he’s done me, my mother, my brother …
I guess I wanted him to say he did us – me – wrong. You see? I felt he owed me something. Not even to apologise; just acknowledge the fact.
That never happened. And now I know it never will. You know when someone’s passed away, and people wish they’d told the person they loved them, or how much they meant to them? I told my dad I loved him and how much he meant to me, a lot towards the end – so I have no regrets about that. And I showed it too, as much as I could.
What I missed was this conversation. Maybe it’s another example, yet again, of me wanting more from him. More than he could or wanted to give. I don’t know …
What I do know is that, it’s all on me now. To sort myself out and choose how I want my relationships to go. To look at my life – at all angles – and choose the life I want to live. For me. After all, he was just living his life the way he chose to live it – for himself, right?