I am currently coming to grips with the fact that I am alone. Alone in my head, my heart. No one else truly knows what it’s like in my head. No one else will ever truly understand what it’s like to be me. No one else can validate me emotionally the way I can learn to validate myself. No one else can save me, no one else can fill the hole in my heart, no one else can truly understand or fix me or solve my problems or make me happy or put meaning into my existence on this rock for however many times I ride it around the sun before my atoms disperse and I cease to be aware. No person or god is going to save me from myself. Waiting for the right person to come around and complete me, waiting for some god to decide to make my life better, these have both been fruitless so far and I’m no longer willing to waste time on them. No god has answered my cry, and I’m no longer willing to live by faith.

But I can flip it on its head. No one else can dictate my happiness = I can choose what makes me happy and do that. No one else can decide how I react to the things that happen in my life. I get to choose happiness, peace, love, and light. Or darkness, despair, sadness. I get to decide what is meaningful to me and then work towards it with all my might. I get to be there for my friends when they’re down and to use these human hands to help solve human problems. I get to choose what I do with the 24 hours I’ve been given every day, and I get to live with the positive or negative consequences that follow. I get to rebuild my life from the ashes into whatever the hell I want, and no one else can tell me differently. I get to find/create my best self, and discover/decide what makes life worth living for me and then do it! I get to spend my life doing whatever is meaningful for me.

This has honestly been kind of overwhelming to realize, and reframing it will happen over time, gradually. Over time I start saying “I get to” more. That is the great and wonderful and terrible gift of agency.