Choices. Our lives are comprised of choices. Thousands upon thousands of choices, inconsequential and life-altering. We make them all day, every day. But what happens when choices are taken away? Who are we, as humans, as individuals, as groups, without choices? Does removing choice remove pieces of us? Does the lack of options make our lives easier, or more difficult? Do too many options, then, make our lives the opposite?
Not so long ago, I didn’t have many choices. Not just the life-altering sort, either. Small choices, tiny choices - the choices that don’t matter until you realize you no longer have them to make. I tethered myself to someone who happily took my choices away to fit me into a pre-determined mold. I became a modular person, a carefully created “individual.” Was I me? In a way. I knew who I had been Before. I knew the person I was permitted to Be, even though that person was a foreigner in many respects. Over time, I learned to carefully lay my feelings in an apathy bucket I kept tucked away for just such a purpose. The lid stayed tightly closed, very tightly closed, only opened to add, never to remove.
And yet, full apathy bucket and all, something gnawed at me. Hadn’t I wanted something better for my life? Hadn’t I once been full of dreams and intentions, as we all are? What had I done that I didn’t deserve to want something more? Deserve to make something more? And perhaps not even more, but something different? A full bucket of any iteration does not necessarily equal a full life, a sated soul. The role into which I had seemingly so easily fallen - glorified housewife with a full-time job, typical chores expected of a woman by a man who couldn’t (wouldn’t) see anything more for his partner - became suddenly an easy albatross. The daily requirements of making lunches, folding laundry, cleaning bathrooms, homemade dinners to be ready at a specific hour - all of these tasks filled my days. My immediate life was easier when they were completed, and so completed they became. It’s far easier to blame the actions than to blame the source of the discomfort, whatever that discomfort may be. I was uncomfortable. I was embarrassed, ashamed of what I had taken on, resentful of what was expected, and increasingly anxious about the choices taken away and the inevitable options thrust upon me. I allowed it.
It dawned on me one day that perhaps I deserved more. Perhaps I could make my own choices, but choosing to choose often means a scourge of the old life. And so I slashed and burned, rising anew, terrified and still ashamed and yet I gloried in the chance to finally make my own choices. It took me a long time to shed the noxious skin of what I perceived to be shameful actions, and slowly I realized that the actions themselves were not shameful. The fact that I allowed those actions to become requirements, rather than choices, was shameful. And so I let it go.
There is a beauty in those simple daily ablutions. There can be pride in a clean house, in a well-made dinner, and even more so in the love put into performing those tasks for yourself, and for those about whom you care unconditionally. When those actions are choices, and when choosing those actions need not preempt spending time with friends and family, or enjoying hobbies, or learning, or any other of the myriad joys of life, they can be a part of the sated soul.
Choice is the only option, my friends. Cling to it tightly, nurture it. Don’t give it away. No one who truly cares for your happiness and their own would take it from you anyway.