Choices

“When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

In Clockwork Orange, the choice is about your very humanity, even if the real you is a total criminal and degenerate. My choices, lately are more simple-- thank goodness. But in the Year Since The Blood Clot, I have made a lot of changes. I have made some big changes lately (HUGE) in terms of my health and spiritual life. I originally planned to write about them here as I went along. Then I didn't. I told myself I "should." I felt guilty about it.

But something happened the longer I didn't do it. What I soon realized is that I didn't write because, frankly, I didn't wanna. Not because it wasn't interesting or that I don't have anything to share, but because, for now, I just want to experience those changes, without judgment. My feeling is that I'm not ready to share them. So I won't. Done. Then, in that space, I started writing one of those books I have been wanting to write for FOREVER. One choice led to another.

In the space of not doing the thing I thought I should do- in the absence of guilt and self-berating- I figured out what I wanted. I made a choice that was meaningful. Then I made some more. I made active and personal choices based on what I needed, not some ideal I talked myself into. Of course, I have to write about something here. Kind of the point of a blog...

so what's to sharea. Well, the downside of making choices, especially when that answer is "no." I've learned in a way I didn't expect that saying no can be very hard. Not the changes themselves, necessarily. In my case, the changes were easy, but not everyone gets as excited about your changes, nor do they understand them. people don't just bummed when you say no. Sometimes they are hurt, confused, and sometimes they just stop talking to you. Especially when you have set up the expectation with other people that you won't ever say no. The person you become is the One Who Will Always Be There And Do The Thing. That's a heavy title. Always being there means the one person you most likely fail to show up for is yourself. But the person you say no to only sees you not showing up for them.

People get used to you always saying yes. They don't see the ways you compromise yourself. In that way, they may not even really understand who you are. How can they when you never completely showed them? Friends, for one, might not always understand why you suddenly aren't up for everything they plan. They take it personally. Even if you are still there and still love them, not being able to say yes to all they require of you speaks louder to them.

I tried for a while to work around that, but that choice? That will really screw you up because eventually, you end up resenting THEM for YOUR choices. Resentment creates its own energy. You take it with you and it sits between you. The only thing to do is create a new normal...and realize, not everyone is going to come with you. If they felt the resentment in the first place, the changes might be even more confusing. Not realizing you felt it against yourself more than them won't change anything. If they didn't feel it, the sudden pulling back probably feels likes ordinary rejection. You do have to accept those consequences you've created, even while you change.


but you have to make choices just for yourself. No, your child does not need another activity that cuts into the budget (and your sanity). Yes, you choose to prioritize sleep so you can get up early every day to workout. Yes, this means midweek evening get togethers aren't possible anymore...but you feel better than you have in years. You set up your rules and you stick to them. Of course, then an impotant invitation comes along- like a friend's birthday party- and even though you are leaving early the next morning for a trip and you haven't yet packed your entire family and their carry-ons, and you are crazed with stress because everyone putgrew their shorts since last summer and where are you going to get some now, and you will be exhausted the next day getting up at 4:00 for your flight, you go to the party. Because it matters.

That friend matters.

That day you choose them because it means something to be there that day, to both of you. That day, sleep and family time and not being stressed out does matter less. in that way, your choices are real and meaningful, not rote. That's how the balance goes.

It's been almost a year since my pulmonary embolism. Actually, the day I count is the day I found out about it, but the day before is the one that changed everything. The day before was the day the clot went through my heart. That was the day I called my husband panicked, scared, and feeling very ill. I chose not to let him come home. I chose not to call 911. I chose to just deal because I had a brunch the next day and I couldn't let people down. Feeling sick, exhausted, and in pain, I got through the day and the brunch. That night I went to the hospital unable to breathe and told how lucky I was to be alive. I got lucky because the choice I made could have killed me. I made a choice to put everything but myself first and I ended up in the hospital.

It hit me, I was making choices all along, but usually those choices weren't for me.

Now, I make choices more carefully. My time, I discovered, means more to me than anything else. How I choose to spend it is not a small thing, but everything. Not everyone will understand that. After all, we all have moments that matter very much to us and not to other people. It's easy to take offense about that, but we shouldn't. Our days are numbered and our choices matter very much to us, as they should.

I'm not scared there won't be a later. It took a while, but I gained confidence- the way anyone whose life has been threatened understands- simply by having one day after another in which things were okay again and nothing bad happens. But time? Time is still not guaranteed and I know it personally and deeply.

I now have a few different tests for my choices:

1. Is this something I want to do or am I doing it out of guilt, because I should, because it is expected of me? (Want wins, guilt loses. Always, guilt loses. Only resentment comes from guilt.)

2. Is the gift of my time greater than the loss of it? (Meaning, time spent talking one-on-one or birthdays win. Joining yet another huge group of people of which I know two and will likely only see them for a few minutes loses.)

3. Am I afraid of something or have excuses not to do it? Or do I just not want to? (This is an interesting one because fear and excuses tell me it matters to me, I just have a block somewhere. Simply not caring one way or another means just that...it doesn't matter to me.)

We are the sum of our choices and the choices I make, the way I spend my time, matters more than ever to me. I take the small stuff less seriously, but my days much more seriously. I know what it is like to feel like you've lost yourself. The pill caused my clot because it first affected my emotional state so much. I was a walking shell of who I had been. It ticked away at my days and my life. I wasted more and more time being sick and ignoring it. I made choices that I thought made me look normal so no one could see how very not normal I felt inside. I ceased to be myself. I am so lucky that I didn't cease to be altogether.

And that's why I count the day I found out about the clot, not the day when it went through my heart. I had already survived the night before. The day I found out about the clot was the day I decided I had to choose better, every day, for myself. It was the day I made what I wanted matter just a little bit more.

Now, the choices I make are because I want to be only me. Me choosing the things that matter and to spend my time with the people who matter. I say no. I don't want to join the PTA- even though it would mean I am "involved" and helping the school- and then I don't join. I don't make excuses, I just decide, I don't want to. But I do show up to volunteer in my child's class and for field trips, because it makes her happy. Making her happy matters. Balance. Those choices, they reflect what matters to me without giving all my days away. In those choices, I am more myself than I have ever been.