Chosen

We met in grad school, chatting about nothing until it was about something. Quickly he settled into a place in my life, made it warm when it had been cold. Friends, we said. It was a better place with him. I watched him shuffle through women on a two-month cycle.  

I found the man who would have been a priest but for the celibacy vow hard to resist. His inner calm, those brown-black eyes that never left mine seemed like a promise I’d never be alone again. Yes, remaining friends was better, safer.   

Until it wasn’t. 

“Love is a choice, and I choose to love you,” he said.  Even when the whispers in my head warned me off, reminded me that his two- month shuffle never wavered. 

But he’d chosen me. I’d be different. I chose to love him back.  

I reveled in a life where closeness was its own reward. We had no money.  Our nights were cups of brown sludge marketed as coffee in all-night diners, studying together in the library, or just talking until sunrise. It was rich and deep, and colored the small boxes we lived in – windowless rooms, hard chairs, empty cabinets, tuition bills. 

In no time, he became my anchor.  The person I glanced at 3:00 in the morning powering through an all-nighter, the mentor who walked me through long, dry texts and politicking professors, the arms that held me when I doubted I could make it through the day.  

Time passed. What we had felt rich, seasoned, worn in, as if it had been nurtured for months, even years. 

Until he left. Two months later. 

I lost the lover and the friend. Three weeks passed, he let me know he was leaving town, moving across the country. He met a woman. The one.  He hadn’t chosen her, he’d fallen for her.  

He had never chosen me at all. 

Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash