Love at first sight isn’t a thing. Attraction at first sight is a thing. Hate at first sight is also a thing (girl in the horizontal striped skirt who stole my peppermint schnapps and left my best friend and me alone in a room after dragging the person we were hanging out with away – I am looking at you). But I don’t think that love is a feeling any more than it is a choice.
It is a choice to let things go beyond a secret 3AM kiss in the kitchen. It is a choice to kiss him again outside of the front door in the snow with a bottle of vodka in your hand. It is a choice to build a stone wall around yourself to prevent him from digging any deeper into who you are. It is a choice to kiss him over the drum and bass only to slap him two minutes later. It is a choice to reply to his drunken messages months later before finally admitting to yourself that maybe you do like him more than you hate him.
It is a choice to strip off your armor and let yourself be emotionally naked, letting him see the pink soft-shelled creature beneath that hard exterior. It is a choice to break dates with more geographically desirable boys because they just can’t capture your interest. It is a choice to swallow your feelings because he’s not ready to hear them, even if swallowing these feelings is like swallowing six saltines without water. It is a choice to stay and see the gold in him even when he is rolling in as much dirt as he can to hide it.
But it was his choice to go. He chose to stop choosing me. And that’s a choice I had to swallow.
But it was my choice to stop blaming myself for the choices he made. I chose to become okay with choosing for myself. I decided that I wasn’t going to fall apart when he chose to go. And I chose me. I picked me. I loved me. I spent time in my own head, in my own self and I came to the conclusion that I will not define my self-worth by the choices he makes because he’s too afraid to make the right one.
And now I think it’s my choice whether or not to choose to choose him again. But, if I’m presented with the choice of him or no him? I’d still choose him. I’d still pick him. I’d still love him. But I get to make that choice.
coeurdelamere 