I bought a 1,000 page book to read recently. It was the dark fantasy Alchemised by SenLinYu. I didn’t know anything about it before I started it, just that it was a social media sensation and ‘everyone was talking about it.’ In fact, when I bought it, nobody I actually knew was talking about it (mostly because I am no longer keeping up with those in the know regarding books or literature!) but I bought it on a whim.

I messaged a friend about the book and I said ‘I hope it breaks me’ or something along those lines. I meant that I wanted to read something incredibly emotional and engaging, something that would would make me lose myself in the world, in the story, in the characters and that by the end of it I’d be so entwined that their heartbreak or achievements would feel like mine. I really wanted the escapism of it all but I also really wanted a story that would grip me and that would make me feel. Hope, longing, despair, heartbreak. Whichever emotion would be strongest I’d take.

I finished reading the book the other day and it did break me in the way that I wanted. There was a moment towards the end of the book as the world in which these characters lived was falling apart and falling apart around them. And they told each other simply that they choose each other. When the world is ending and no choice is the right one, they choose each other.

And I cried.

Not so much because I really loved this story or these characters. I thought the book itself was about 300 pages too long and I didn’t love the non-linear timeline which made me less engaged. It was just an okay book.

But what made me cry is that in that moment I realised that nobody has ever really chosen me.

Not my parents or my brother, not my extended family. Not my ex-husband’s family, not my ex-husband. My (former) best friend recently made the decision not to choose me. My ex doesn’t choose me, my on/off person doesn’t choose me.

And I was staring at the words of this book, tears streaming down my face, thinking this long list of people in my life that don’t choose me. Trying my very fucking hardest to land on one name, any name where I thought this person, this person chooses me. And it was starting to get a little desperate when I finally got there.

I choose me.

I choose me in everything that I do. In everything that I’ve ever done in my life. In the face of rejection and disappointment and hurt, I choose me. I choose me by thinking hopefully about the future, about making the hard decisions now that mean the right things for me. I choose me by investing in myself, in my career, in the right relationships for me.

And it’s felt like a life-changing realisation. Like something broken inside of me healed just that little bit in the knowing that somebody does, and always has chosen me.