Finality

I've always been a firm believer in

Giving it your all,

Going big or going home,

Leaving it all behind.

Maybe it has to do with my die-hard sports fan father who engrained in me that, even when the going gets tough, I should never ever give up.

Or perhaps my mindset stems from my mother who walked through life alone, dead-set on creating happy lives for me and my sister.

Whatever the reason, it's caused every single decision that I've ever made to be marked by a sense of finality.

For me, finality has lent itself to be both a blessing and a curse.

When there's no chance of going back, the smallest of decisions present themselves to you as towering, fearsome giants who manage to cast a charcoal shadow over any and every thing. This is the curse.

That said, because of what's on the line—what you have to lose—your judgement becomes crystal clear as the Mediterranean Sea, resulting in the most objective of decisions. This is the blessing.

Unfortunately, things change.

The best decision that you could have made at the time, one day, very well may transform into the most stupid, careless mistake of your life.

What once appeared to be the only reasonable choice catches you by surprise, morphing from a daring butterfly into an unsophisticated caterpillar—something you never could have anticipated.

In my case, the butterfly was leaving you, walking away from someone who couldn't—wouldn't—give me the love and affection that I so desperately craved.

The godforsaken caterpillar was your unspeakable absence—a thing too horrible to express in words.

Never could I have seen it coming, and never can I ever go back.