The Weight of Being Chosen

I was taught to call it a gift —

being chosen, being wanted,

being the one who got picked up

out of a life that wasn't working.

No one taught me what to do

with the guilt that came folded inside it,

tucked into the same suitcase

as gratitude and grief.

Guilt for loving the hands that raised me

when other hands made me first.

Guilt for calling this house home

when another house still aches for me,

somewhere, in someone's memory,

in a room I don't remember.

Guilt for the ease of it —

for laughing at this table,

for meaning it when I say Mom,

for the years that softened into normal,

when normal was never supposed to be mine.

I carry two mothers in my chest

like two different weathers.

I am not allowed to love one

without a small, cold voice asking

what does that make you, then —

ungrateful, or disloyal,

or just a child who wanted

to be loved without keeping score?

Nobody hands you a way to hold this.

No one tells you that caring itself

can feel like betrayal —

that the softer you let yourself love,

the louder the guilt gets,

whispering you left someone behind

to get here.

But I am starting to believe

this isn't betrayal at all.

It's just what happens

when a heart is asked to hold

more history than one family

was ever built to carry.

I didn't choose to be split

between who made me

and who raised me

and who fought for me in between.

I only choose, now,

what I do with all three —

and I choose to stop apologizing

for every place love found me.

I am allowed to be grateful

without being disloyal.

I am allowed to grieve

without being ungrateful.

I am allowed to be whole

even though I was assembled

from more than one beginning.

The guilt may never fully leave.

But I don't have to let it drive.

I get to sit in the passenger seat

of my own becoming,

and love, finally,

without asking permission

from the ghosts of who I might have been.