People say things happened.
That life pushed them.
That circumstances forced their hand.
That there was no real choice left.
But I keep noticing something else.
I remember choosing to reach out
when silence would’ve been easier.
Choosing to stay.
And later — choosing to leave.
Choosing to move,
even while holding onto something
that already felt fragile.
At the time, it all felt complicated.
Heavy.
Unclear.
But looking back,
none of it was automatic.
Not always free.
Not always fully conscious.
Sometimes shaped by fear, habit, survival —
or what we learned long before we had words for it.
Still chosen.
What makes it harder
is that choices don’t live alone.
They get misunderstood.
Reinterpreted.
Minimized.
Renamed into expectations.
Then reactions.
Or “good intentions” —
ways we make them easier to live with.
Sometimes even I soften them after.
Anything but calling them what they were.
But a choice doesn’t stop being a choice
just because it was unconscious,
or misunderstood,
or later explained away.
And maybe that’s the uncomfortable part.
Not that people chose differently,
but that they chose at all.
Because once we see that,
we’re left with a quieter question:
What was actually chosen —
and what did I later rename
to make it easier to carry?
Some things weren’t fate.
They were decisions we survived.