This life is my choice

One of the songs my friend from Iowa & I sang together when she joined me for a couple days on my trip in August was the ballad “This land is your land” — she with her beautiful soprano voice (& strumming the guitar) and me in my now very deep alto (or maybe already bass). 

The tune is easy and I have sung this ballad to myself often since then. Recently, though, I have changed the words of the chorus and been singing the following refrain that feels more aligned to me & my life: 

“This life is my life 

This life is my choice 

From California to Colorado 

From redwood forests to cold creek waters

This life really is my own choice” 

One of the clearest and strongest feelings or convictions that I have taken away from the loss of my father and the separation from my European genderqueer friend/ex-lover is the deep & clear realization that the life I am living is what I have chosen and made for myself. It’s been sinking in with great intensity lately: this is my life, this is the result of my choices. 

This realization is a little scary — there’s no one else to blame. But it’s mostly empowering. I feel a profound and almost liberating sense of responsibility towards myself, towards my actions, my choices. I’ve always felt an instinctive sense of responsibility (partly also because it was taught to me, I was brought up that way), but somehow now it’s clearer, I’m more aware and cognisent of it. And while being scary, this feeling is also empowering. There are moments when I feel nervous, or even anxious, about the implications of this, the weight of my choices being my own responsibility; but I’ve also been embracing this realization in a way that feels motivating. 

I almost feel like I’ve finally grown up.