Not Choosing Is Your Choice

"Make a choice, Lucy!"

"You make a choice!" her head throbbed.

" I did make a choice. I chose you. I have been choosing you every single day since you appeared. Every single thing I do is choosing you. So don't you dare tell me about making choices. I Choose. I act. I decide. The only thing you choose is you."

"And maybe that works for you, and maybe that will work for you somewhere, but that place is not here. I won't wait forever. I can't wait forever. And if you do wait, the day you do decide, I won't feel bad if you look up and I am not there. Because I did choose and you'll be too late."

The silence lasted long enough for both of them to age, until Lucy finally spoke, kicking her heels against the fence she sat on.

"I don't know how to choose you."

"What do you mean you don't know how?"

"What if I'm wrong, I choose and it's wrong? You're wrong? We're wrong?"

"But what if we're right? Do you ever stop to think of that? What if this " he gestures between them, "is enough. What if I'm it, Lucy, and maybe I'm not in the package you imagined. But maybe if you got out of your own way for two seconds you would see that this box" - he circles an invisible line around his chest-" is enough. In fact, it's better than you dare to dream. Hate to break it to you babe - but I'm it. I'm your Buckley trees, your coffee shops, I'm every word you're saying when you aren't talking, I'm your freaking Mississippi."

He got quieter then.

"So please, please stop pushing me away. Please stop fighting me. Everything in you is screaming. Can't you hear that? Everyone can hear that. Please listen long enough to just be… happy."

He was her Mississippi - so unexpected, so unplanned, so unassuming, yet the piece to a puzzle she didn't know existed, a puzzle so well hidden that she'd only found it when she was standing directly on top of it. That she knew.

But the unknowns were so big that they consumed her. The what if's were so bright she couldn't see anything else even if she tried. Her wildest dreams were far far from this place and the unfamiliarity of it all was becoming too much.

"I didn't plan for this," her voice trembled. "None of this is MY life. Not who I am."

"Why not?"

She thought for a very long time about those two words. Why not. Every reason she gave herself, though valid, felt flimsy, so much so that even trying to speak them was impossible.

Because this is the south. Because we're so different. Because I suck and you're brilliant. Because I cry and you're strong. Because art school and your PhD, because we'd be poor. Because your'e too tall, too spiritual, too bright, too thoughtful, too kind, too warm, too intuitive.

Because you see too much of me. You see everything.

You know my secrets, but I can't begin to find yours. Because someday you'll discover the real me, the bad parts of me, the parts your Mama has always taught you to avoid. And on that day, the dissapointment on your face, the betrayal in your eyes will be so great, that my heart will break.

So I think I'll stay up here on the pedestal you've invented, safe enough to admire, but not too close to let you down.

At least these were the excuses she told herself.

What she didn't know then, was that if she left - when she left - a piece of her would stay in Mississippi, leaving a constant dull ache, that ocassionally would flare into a flame so warm that it would consume her whole chest. And when it flared up she'd type out a text or google flights to Memphis, or paint trees. Anything to feel closer to him, to herself, to home. But then the flame would fade, breath would return to her lungs, reality would settle like dust and she'd carry on.