Learning to Choose

I will never forget the first time I stood in a restaurant and could not order.

It was not long after we left. We were starting over with nothing, and someone had taken us out to eat. A kindness I still carry with me. The menu was open in front of me. The waitress was waiting. And I froze.

It was not about the food.

It was about the fact that no one had ever asked me what I wanted before.

For most of my life, decisions were made for me. What to wear. What to eat. What to believe. Who to trust. How to spend my hours. The shape of my days was drawn by hands that were not my own.

I was taught that this was safety. That surrender was strength. That my own voice was not to be trusted.

And so I learned to silence it.

I learned to look for cues instead of convictions. To wait for permission instead of listening to my own knowing. To shrink my wants down so small they almost disappeared.

When I finally stepped into a world where I was free to choose, I did not know how.

Freedom, it turns out, is terrifying when you have never practiced it.

Those first months were filled with small moments like that one in the restaurant. Moments where I stood paralyzed by the simplest questions. What do you want to do today? What do you think about this? What feels right to you?

I did not know. I genuinely did not know.

But here is what I have learned since then.

Choosing is a muscle. And like any muscle, it grows stronger with use.

I started small. I let myself pick the meal without apologizing. I let myself say no when something did not feel right. I let myself say yes when something did, even if I could not explain why.

I made mistakes. Plenty of them. I chose wrong sometimes. I trusted the wrong people. I walked down paths that led nowhere.

But every choice, even the wrong ones, taught me something. They taught me that I could recover. That a bad decision was not the end of the world. That my own judgment, though rusty and unpracticed, was worth developing.

Slowly, I began to hear my own voice again.

It had been there all along. Buried under years of silence. Waiting.

Now I make decisions every single day. Big ones. Hard ones. The kind that used to paralyze me. And I will not pretend it is always easy. Sometimes the old fear creeps back in. Sometimes I still look around for someone to tell me what to do.

But I do not wait for permission anymore.

I have learned that my voice matters. That my wants are not dangerous. That the quiet knowing inside me is not something to silence but something to honor.

Choosing is how I reclaimed my life.

One small decision at a time. One brave yes. One honest no. One moment of trusting myself when everything in my past told me not to.

If you are learning to choose for yourself, maybe for the first time, I want you to know something.

It will feel strange at first. Uncomfortable. Maybe even wrong.

But it is not wrong.

It is freedom.

And you were made for it.

Love,

Jasmine