Choosing Yourself Is Harder Than Anyone Tells You
Choosing Yourself Is Harder Than Anyone Tells You
By: Jamila Gomez
People talk about “choosing yourself” like it’s a clean, glamorous act of self-love. Like you light a candle, make a vision board, and boom—you’re healed, whole, and standing in your power. The truth is, it’s nothing like that. Choosing yourself is messy. It’s lonely. It’s questioning whether you made the right choice while also knowing deep down you did.
I had a hard day recently—the kind of day where you walk through the door and feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. My first thought was how nice it would be to have somebody there. Not to fix anything, not to solve the problem, just to be present. To sit next to me, maybe bring me a cup of tea, or say, “Yeah, today was rough.” That longing was real.
But then I remembered what it was like when I did have somebody. The truth is, those hard days didn’t magically get better just because I wasn’t alone. Sometimes, I still felt lonely in the same room with them. Sometimes, their way of being “there” came with extra weight—judgment, distraction, or even the silent reminder that my needs weren’t really understood. And it hit me: being partnered doesn’t always mean being supported.
That’s the part people skip over. Choosing yourself often means saying no to situations that look good from the outside but drain you on the inside. It’s walking away from what’s familiar because it costs too much of your peace. And when you do, the empty space it leaves behind can feel unbearable at first.
You have to learn how to hold yourself in that space. To sit with your own feelings instead of numbing them. To be your own witness on the hard days. And that’s a skill nobody teaches you—because most people don’t want to sit with themselves long enough to learn it.
Choosing yourself isn’t about isolation. It’s about knowing you’d rather stand alone than stay somewhere that requires you to shrink. It’s about building a life where you are not a side character, where your needs matter as much as anyone else’s. That doesn’t mean the longing disappears—it means you don’t let longing be the only reason you settle.
So yes, it’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. But over time, you notice the small victories: how you speak to yourself more gently, how you trust your own judgment more, how your peace feels less negotiable. And then one day, even on a hard day, you realize—you’d still choose yourself.
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