In this wonderful journey of life, one will always be given choices. Sometimes you will choose what is best for you, and other times you will make the wrong choice. Everyone goes through this. People have to make the wrong choice sometimes, in order to learn. We have to make a wrong choice because we have to have our commitment to ourselves tested and our willingness to follow our dreams questioned. A little over a year ago, I made a wrong choice. I chose to continue a relationship with someone toxic because I was afraid of being alone. No one made that choice for me. I made that choice.
Were others supporting me in my choice?
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Yes.
Were there individuals around me, keeping their mouths closed although they knew it would end in disaster?
Yes.
Were there others around me telling me this was the best decision I would make?
Yes.
At the end of the day, it was I who made the choice. Not my mom. Not my best friend. Not the guy I was with. Not anyone around me. It was me. Me. I did this.
When I made the decision, I didn't know what it would bring in the future. I didn't know of the heart break it would bring me or how it would effect me even a year later. All I knew was my fear of losing someone I had gotten so close to. My bad decision quickly showed itself. It presented itself in the form of me losing some of the best friends I could ever have because I wasn't allowed to hang out with them without a pointless argument. It introduced itself as a familiar friend when I was confronted with the guy telling me "no" when I tried to break up with him. When I became fully aware of my situation, I was obviously furious.
How could I let someone do this to me? How could I let go of my control on my own life because of the threat of having a sense of comfort ripped away from me? What opportunities did I miss out on when I was blinded by the light that he was? How could I let myself believe that after 100 tries that 101 was going to be different? They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. I had driven myself insane.
That rage and anger, which was myself and should have been directed as such, predictably became projected on him. It was him, I was telling myself, that was responsible for holding me hostage, keeping me from my friends. Attempting to own my friendships, own my free time ...own me. At that time, I couldn't understand that while all of this was happening, it was me who chose to stay... he was not responsible.
I tried to end our relationship and in the heat of it all said some things I had to say to get out. Some of the things I said spoke of only the wrongs he did, none of mine (although he eagerly tried to point them out to me in the harshest of ways.) I wanted to hurt him just as he had hurt me. I wanted to give him the pain of losing everyone around him, like he had attempted to do me.
Looking back on the situation, I could have simply said no when he begged me to stay the first 100 times. After all, he isn't a horrible person (although I perceived him as such). We just got too obsessed with control over making the relationship perfect. He gave me the choice of him or my friends, I always chose him. I nestled in the sense of comfort he gave me. It was too easy to stay somewhere I knew I would have someone when it appeared I had no one, but it was necessary for the realization that he wasn't my happily ever after.
In the end of this relationship, I lost people whom I had grown to love. Including him.
I realized that me making my “wrong” choice to stay with him, was not just about me being overcome with fear; it was also about me being overcome by love, and the concerns that I would lose a family that I cared for very deeply if I left. A big part of the reason I made the “wrong choice” because I didn’t want to make a choice that would mean losing part of, what felt like, my own family. But in the end, I lost that connection anyway.
It is a lesson learned.
And it is a lesson that you do not have to repeat.
Hear me:
Don’t accept the continuum of colors canvassed before you as the only prisms of light possible. There are more.
The “wrong” choice, does not have to be your ultimate choice. And if you are in that choice now, I encourage you to do what I am trying to do everyday: Forgive yourself. You still have to look at you.
