For the past few weeks I have been on call waiting for his response. Phone next to the bed, notifications on, random spurts of awake during the night to check because of our time difference. I have been responding promptly, ensuring he isn’t waiting, making sure it is clear I’m invested, showing him that games should remain in childhood. When at first I wasn’t getting a clear response from him, I even double messaged, asking again when he would like to FaceTime, throwing myself out there like a fish on land hoping he would make the choice to take my vulnerability into consideration. The responses have become slim to none, spread out so far that I am never awake when they come in, sometimes distancing a week in between. To the girls reading this, know that I do not enjoy playing the fool, but we all need to play it once to realize why we should never put that hat on again. What are mistakes without the opportunity to learn from them?
As someone who works with people I know the power of choice. We make choices everyday- what we want for breakfast, what show we want to watch, what shirt we want to wear, and what we want to do with our time. Choices tie solely to our wants, to our needs, and to our priorities. Choices define our actions in a way excuses never can. You could say I was making him a priority. I have done this dance before, the salsa before the solo. Where for a brief moment you are there together, but slowly it becomes clear that this is a one man show. It’s never any easier the second or third time you realize this is happening. It’s always painful to see you were not a priority or choice, to hear excuses instead of the truth. Simply put, he did not like me enough to choose me. I have made excuses of my own before- I’m not looking for anything right now, I’m busy, I actually try not to be on my phone a lot- but when it comes down to it, they are excuses.
There is a famous quote by Albus Dumbledore that I have fallen in love with the older I get. It says “It is our choices,Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” It focuses on the fact that or choices speak louder than our capabilities. Dumbledore did always know exactly what to say. I could be sad about this, I could be disappointed, and I could react. I have the ability to choose, to know what my priorities are, but he is not one of them. In the past I may have vented to all my friends as we sat around a bottle of wine sharing war stories of our own about the wounds we collected from other’s choices. But the difference now lies in the power of my choice. Now I see that my time is no longer meant to be spent where it is not reciprocated and this makes me wonder what my time is meant to be spent on. I look internally instead of externally. I think of ways that I have wanted to challenge myself and seek those options. We must love ourself before others can do the same. Maybe I will choose to pick up painting. Maybe I will choose to take that solo trip to South America like I wanted to. Maybe I will choose to write that book. Maybe I will choose myself again, before I got lost in someone else that wasn’t meant to be mine.
We all have this ability to choose- who we give our time to, how others make us feel, to turn our dreams into goals. It is when we realize that the control is ours all along that we begin taking those steps forward into the beautiful unknown and start making the changes we wish to see. Like calls to like as we all know, and if I strive to make myself even more interesting, to take this time to challenge myself in more ways, well then maybe once I am done, someone else, one with priorities instead of excuses, will come along wanting to choose me.