One Simple, Disastrous Choice

There’s a very distinct feeling that you get when you finally realize that the person you want most might just feel the same way about you. It’s not in your heart; it’s so much more widespread. It travels through all of your limbs in a split second. It feels like electricity, tingling in every cell of your body, scrambling your brain and making your heart race.
It’s not even that good of a feeling. It’s a strange mixture of one part excitement and nine parts terror. Real, incapacitating, freeze-your-every-move terror. That realization that something may actually come of this.
And then after that electric feeling of realization comes the inexplicable urge to run. Where does that come from? You wanted this. Didn’t you? But you’re not sure. You were never sure. You never stopped to consider that this could actually happen. You were lost in the moment, the rosy glow of having a crush on someone you thought you could never have. It didn’t hurt to think about them, to talk to them and laugh with them if you could never and would never have anything more than friendship.
And then everything changes, with the smallest of things: a confession, a phone call, a text message, even a smile. And then, suddenly, they’re within your reach. Suddenly the world is open to you, in a way you hadn’t thought possible. And in that moment, when everything has changed and your life is now full of possibilities… in that moment, you have a choice.
On the one hand, you can choose the safe choice. The innocent, pass-it-by, path of least resistance. The easy choice, where you can ignore the fact that your existence has been turned upside down and inside out and where you can pretend nothing has changed. Stay friends, keep talking, continue laughing. Disregard that sinking feeling in your chest, the quiet voice in the back of your mind. Refuse to think about the what-ifs, the if-onlys and the could-have-beens. Determine the future with one carefully-crafted response to nudge away the opportunity with blunt-force trauma.
It is your choice. This isn’t cowardice. But it’s damn close, especially in comparison with the other hand. The hand that holds heaven on earth, if only you have the courage to take it.
The other choice is the one that scares you. The risks involved hardly seem to justify themselves. Choosing this path ruins any real chance of keeping that person as a friend, if anything goes wrong. The number of possible outcomes is dizzying. There’s just too much that could destroy everything. After all, you, of all people, know just how fragile the human heart is. And what if you’re wrong? What if you misinterpreted? What if you misunderstood? What if they don’t actually return your feelings? What then? Maybe it’d be better to go with the safe path.
But if you don’t act, if you don’t choose to risk everything, you’ll never know what could have been, what should have been. Twenty years from now, the things you’ll regret most are the things you didn’t do. There’s no point in existing if you aren’t going to live. Take chances, make choices, risk it all. Leap off a cliff so high you can’t see the sea below, because it’s worth the danger. Take all that you know and toss it to the winds, see it scatter in all directions and come to rest in ways you would never have expected.
Reach for something that’s beyond your fingertips. Dream about something that escapes your imagination. Love someone who’s out of your league.
All of the barriers that prevent you from doing anything and everything are the ones you allow to stop you. Once you realize this, the future is yours. Take it.
I highly recommend it.
-Lucifer