Choices, Timing and Slip-Proof Gloves

There is something to be said about the adult decisions we have to make in life that not only do not align with our desired intention, but seem to counter it in a completely opposing manor. Perhaps it’s not the intention. Perhaps it’s the desire at its most basic form.

Why are we confronted with scenarios that sound a bit like this…if you want ‘A’, choose ‘B’, ‘C’, or ‘D’ to stay live. ‘A’ will most likely kill you. ‘A’ has been actually slowing killing you in all its subtleness leading up to the point of having to make a choice.
If ‘A’ is the essence of what we truly want, why can’t we have the little innocent box we can check marked ‘A’. WHY? WHY! It might help here to insert a personal example of something you have recently had to decide against even though in all its glory, it’s what you actually wanted in the end.

I have recently been encountered with a choice. A choice that in its own unfortunate circumstance, I was given only option ‘A’ and option ‘B’—at least that’s how I saw it. I think when it comes down to only two choices, it’s usually because we know if we limit it down to just the one, it would be choosing the less attractive of the choices we are procrastinating from making. So we throw in one other option just to torture ourselves a little bit. It’s ironic, because often times that second choice is on the opposite side of the Richter scale. It’s consequential outcome would look so different if chosen, that it makes us look a little longer at the real decision that is so difficult, if not heart wrenching, to make.

My situation has to do with the most difficult of choices—attempting open-heart surgery without even the prospect of clean tools and some good Morphine. I attempted to reach deep into my heart and turn the light off to a life-changing love that has come to the end of its three-year rope. In defense to the matter, I would like to say it’s not by choice, but God knows after years of decisions revolving around this man, this life we had, it would appear otherwise.

I have to laugh a teeny bit. I fought so hard for better for him, better for me and the both of us, and after all that fighting, we ending up getting what we wanted from life...without each other. Many of the huge decisions he has made I was his number one supporter for. I encouraged it every step of the way. I never thought those steps would lead him right off my island into the unknown and leave me alone there.

In my mind, my two choices were either ‘A’, stay here. Stay patient. Stay with him even if he’s not with me. Perhaps when the timing is right, our worlds wont look so far apart and he’ll really see me again…like he used to. Or ‘B’, stand, turn, and bow out. For the first part of this year I felt the first choice would fill me up enough to keep me going, but somewhere along the way, something in side of me ran out. The hand that was gripping that rope lost its strength and lost faith that someone would reach out with their hand and grab it. The realization that he wasn’t coming back to me any time soon hit me.

The second realization came shortly after with a full on mental PowerPoint slide show of the pitiful thoughts that swarmed around my head including my own smoke-and-mirror effect of a fake relationship that not only did not exist in reality but one I was having one-sidedly in my own mind. The last thing I wanted to do was let go of this mystic relationship I was involved in. I knew if I let go of that my chances of rekindling a flame I could actual touch, actually feel, would be perished.

For the first time, I had truly opened my heart this year. I did what I said, I said what I meant. I was honest with myself and not only honest with Mr. Mystical, I was open about it all. It took me 23 and some years to get to this point and other people aren’t there for you to practice on in the hopes that someday…someday, you’ll get there. If your heart takes months, years, a lifetime, to open, that’s how long it will take you to not necessarily fall in love, but into the arms of the love of your life.

Some people claim that love is all a matter of timing. I have spent my life disagreeing with that statement, claiming that love is inconvenient, all-consuming, life changing and forever scarred on your heart. After experiencing that exact movement in my life, I have to wonder if timing does in fact play its part in all this. I fell in love, and it was inconvenient. It was all-consuming. It was the hardest I’ve ever fallen and has definitely left a scar on my heart as well as a few bumps and bruises from the great height it started out at.

The inconvenience seemed to play a relatively large part in our time together. It wasn’t so much that loving each other was inconvenient, but the timing of when we were willing to put all our chips in blind folded lacked in synchronicity. We struggled back and forth being fully invested in this life together and it was never fair to the other when it happened.

Without regressing to a glass-half-empty outlook on the life of being in love in a relationship, there is some merit to the timing of life. Perhaps timing is set in motion to prevent things from happening that aren’t ready yet or perhaps we slipped into encouraging them to happen in a way or with another that is not our destiny. I’m not really sure, but of one thing, I am sure.

I am sure I can’t spend my life trying so hard to make myself visible to Mr. Mystical. I can’t beat myself up because I wasn’t in the right place at the right time in my past. I can’t allow life to go by in patience, waiting.

In the end, I chose option ‘B’. I had to bow out in the most graceful way I knew how. It’s never an easy decision to choose hurt now over hurt later, but if you see that hurt ahead, you have to do what at least feels best for you right now. I wish there was a way to know if we were making wise choices in life, but we rarely know right away. I chose to say goodbye to a ghostly person who no longer existed, in my life or in the world at all. I helped in some small way create a shiny new person I’m not sure I even really recognize and I find myself wishing for that person I used to know, the person who gave me a leading part in his world. However, this overnight transformation seemed to happen so quickly, I can’t help but think this is his destiny.

None of this life is convenient. Not much worth holding into comes easily into our lives. And when it does, buy yourself some slip-proof gloves and grab onto that baby with everything you have. Tell that person simply, I’m here. Sometimes that’s all we need to hear to let that person, that feeling, hold onto us. Life doesn’t just settle down and give you a window to get married or take a career stride, have a child or get a dog or travel. You just have to choose it.

Life is too short not to make choices or wait for choices to choose you.

Keep your life moving. Keep choosing. Keep living. There is so much out there with your name on it.

Go get it.