Isn’t that what they say, at least? I tell that to my pounding heart, my flighty stomach. I tell that to the weepy eyes, my bloody nose. It hadn’t quite hit me, this choice that I made, until I saw you waiting in the window for me to come home. Your warm body wedged next to mine in bed, little vibrating rib cage. Your cool wet nose sliding across my skin. This little being who doesn’t share a future with me.

I’ve made a lot of hard choices and I’ve paid a lot of steep prices and the knowledge that they have borne the fruit of my life gives me little comfort as I’m plotting towards something you can’t know. I’ve parted with a lot of things, and yet this grief springs new every time. I’m standing at a crossroads holding too much to carry. Your path is right and mine is left. And both lead us to futures of happiness and prosperity. Yet still I curse under my breath at the southern sun that the world has diverged in this way.

Sometimes you find yourself leading a life that is unfair to everyone involved in it. Change is the great constant and reward for seeing another day. Difficult decisions are inevitable and necessary. Who could I ever be if I plant my feet at this crossroads and damn it all to hell? No, this must come to pass. You must find your way and I must find mine and all of us will find our happiness.

But even with my course laid in, I find it impossible to begin, to know how to step forward into this new soil. I’ll feel better once I do but a spell of sorrow holds me here; I don’t know how to begin. So many small consequences of big course corrections, I’m sure that the residuals of my choice have only begun. But there is a singular truth that I hold to, one that binds me to sanity and circumvents all other fallacies. My life is my own, and my choices are mine, and I require no validation to do what I’m called to do.

The bitter parts of life balance the sweetness that blow in off good times. They punctuate all that we achieve and all that we hold dear. Risks and choices and rolls of the dice, all necessary to gain anything in an existence so strategically filled with landmines. That you and I should have met at all, that we should have spent 7 lucky years together, that I rescued you and you rescued me. Those are all the things worth taking away. Everything else can be left at that crossroads.