Lifetime choice

After lunch we linger at the kitchen table and out of the blue I say to Kenji: "I could have left you, you know, when you were diagnosed." He flinches upon hearing my words and I realize a bit more subtlety would have been desirable.
"I chose to be with you." Um, I'd better said that first when I opened my mouth. And made it sound sort of funny, like "I choo-choo-choose you", after one of our favorite Simpsons episodes.

When Kenji proposed to me, I said yes. Wholeheartedly. Yet the months in between the evening he knelt down and presented me my engagement ring and the day we got married, I deliberated. Weighed pros and cons. Decided that there weren't any cons and that my heart was right to begin with: my mind could say yes too.

The same thing happened after Kenji was diagnosed. My heart said O.K. Nevertheless I wanted to be fully sure that I was in this for the long run. That come the time I would be sick with exhaustion, or frustration, or fear, or all of the above and some, I wouldn't be able to say that I didn't have a choice. Because I did. Nobody forced me into staying. I could have walked away and started over with the boys. Opted for the socially unacceptable. Except again there were no cons to be found, no matter how hard I looked.

So whenever I'm worn out or deeply afraid, I don't ask myself: "Is this what I réally want out of life?". No. I've made not one, but two choices. Lifetime choices.