At some point,
You started organizing your life around being chosen,
Not consciously,
Just quietly,
In the background.
Being the right amount of everything,
Not too much,
Not too little,
Available but not desperate,
Independent but not distant,
Soft enough,
Strong enough,
Interesting enough.
And underneath all of that,
The hope that if you got it right,
Someone would finally see you and decide you were worth staying for.
Find where you're sitting,
Let the body land,
You don't have to get anything right in the next few minutes.
Bring your attention to the chest.
Is there a waiting there,
A low-level holding,
Something that's been on standby for longer than you can remember?
Waiting to be seen,
Waiting to be picked,
Waiting for someone to confirm what you haven't been able to give yourself.
That waiting is exhausting,
Not because wanting connection is wrong,
But because you handed the answer to someone else before they even showed up.
Move to the stomach.
Think about the last time you made yourself smaller to keep someone comfortable,
Not because they asked,
Because you were afraid that your full size might be too much.
That fear is not the truth about you,
It's what happens when being chosen becomes more important than being whole.
Now the hands let them open.
What would it feel like to stop waiting?
Not to stop wanting,
Just to stop waiting.
Being chosen feels like the goal,
Because for a long time it was the only goal available.
Belong,
Be loved,
Be enough in someone else's eyes.
But here's the thing about waiting to be chosen,
It puts your entire sense of self in someone else's hands,
And people are unreliable not because they're bad,
Because they're human.
Because they have their own fears and wounds and blind spots.
The woman who waits to be chosen is always one person's decision away from falling apart.
The woman who chooses herself first,
Not instead of love before it.
She's different.
She walks into rooms differently,
She loves differently.
She leaves differently when she needs to.
Not because she stopped wanting to be loved.
Because she stopped needing it,
To know who she is.
Repeat with me.
I do not need to be chosen to be valuable.
I can want love without organizing my life around earning it.
My wholeness is not waiting for someone else to confirm it.
I choose myself first,
Not instead of others before them.
I am not on standby.
I am already here.
Let the chest open a little.
Let the stomach soften.
Let the hands stay open.
You spent a long time trying to be the right version of yourself for other people.
That's not something to be ashamed of.
That's what you were taught love required.
But you can teach yourself something different now.
That the right person doesn't need you to be a performance.
They need you to be present.
And you can only be present when you've stopped waiting.
And started arriving.
Take a fuller breath.
Let the room come back.
You are not a role waiting to be cast.
You are not an audition.
You are not a maybe.
You are someone who is already here,
Already whole,
Already enough to choose and be chosen.
From a place that doesn't shape.
That place exists in you.
It always did.
