Did I Choose Survival or Did I Just Settle?

A fifth entry in a healing and love series — where I begin to ask not what I had to let go of, but what parts of me I never gave a chance to grow.

There are decisions you make so young, they don’t feel like choices, they feel like instincts. Like survival. Like standing in the middle of a storm and bracing your body against the wind, because no one else will. You don’t ask if it’s fair. You don’t ask if there’s another way. You just plant your feet and bear it.

That’s how I’ve lived for most of my life — anchored by duty, moved by necessity, held together by the quiet belief that someone had to stay strong. And that someone was me.

When I look back now, I can’t always trace the exact moment I stopped asking what I wanted. I think it happened gradually, in the in-between spaces: between tuition and grocery bills, between the silence I learned to keep and the sacrifices I never voiced aloud. Between being told I was capable and realizing that no one ever asked if I was tired.

Somewhere in all that — I stopped being a girl with dreams and became a woman with responsibilities. I told myself it was noble. That letting go of love, softness, and even pieces of myself was just part of the price of choosing the greater good.

But lately, I’ve been asking myself something I never had the courage to consider before: Did I actually choose survival… or did I just settle?

I don’t mean “settle” in the way people say when they talk about relationships or careers that don’t excite them. I mean — settle as in… did I accept a life that always asked me to shrink, because I thought expansion wasn’t meant for people like me?

Did I choose this path because it was right? Or because I was afraid of wanting something more?

Because sometimes, I think I confused selflessness with self-erasure.

I became so good at showing up for others that I forgot how to show up for myself. I equated sacrifice with virtue, and silence with strength. I told myself that desire was a luxury, and that I couldn’t afford it. That love — the enduring kind — wasn’t for people like me, not if I wanted to stay safe, focused, steady.

So I made survival look like strategy. I made it look brave. And in many ways, it was.

But beneath that bravery, there was another truth I couldn’t admit: I was scared. Scared to ask for more. Scared to be disappointed. Scared that if I reached for something tender, I’d lose everything I’d worked so hard to hold together.

So I stayed. In places that didn’t feel like home. In patterns that looked like strength but were really just control. I stayed so long in “just enough” that I forgot what wanting felt like. What softness could do. What desire without guilt might look like.

And here’s the hardest part to say:

I wonder what I lost while I was building a life that was supposed to save everyone.

I think about the girl I was — the one who believed in magic for a little while. The one who felt love bloom, even briefly. The one who didn’t flinch at the thought of being chosen.

She didn’t survive.

I did.

And now I live with the question: Was that survival… or surrender?

There’s no clear answer. No perfect moment of clarity. Just a quiet unfolding. A slow peeling back of the stories I told myself. A careful examination of the life I built with both pride and pain.

Some days, I still convince myself I made the right choice. That love would have only slowed me down. That heartbreak would’ve cost too much. That safety was more important than longing.

But other days — when I see someone loved gently, when I hear a laugh that comes from deep belonging, when I sit with my own silence — I wonder if I could’ve had that too. If I still could.

What I know is this: survival made me strong, but it also made me hard. And now, I’m learning how to soften again — not for someone else, not to be chosen — but to remember I am still here. That I still have time.

I’m not angry at the girl who chose duty. She saved us. She carried the weight no one else could. She made sure we were fed, housed, stable. She did the best she could with what she had.

But I am grieving the woman I could’ve been if she had believed she was allowed to want more.

And maybe that’s what this season is for. Not to undo the past. Not to rewrite the choices. But to honor them — while making space for new ones.

I’m still scared. Still guarded. Still unsure if I know how to be held without flinching.

But I’m here.

And I think I’m ready to ask:

What if survival doesn’t have to be the whole story anymore?

What if I’m allowed to choose softness now — without apology?

What if I’ve always deserved more than just making it through?

Maybe it’s not too late.

Maybe I didn’t settle.

Maybe I just paused — until I learned how to live for myself, too.

Missed the earlier pieces in this healing and love series?

Please visit - Beneath the Misses, Beyond the Mess: My Way Back to Me

And then the rest of the mess unfolds…

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