I Don’t Want To Be an Option for Anyone

If you’ve ever looked back on your life and lamented the decisions you’ve made, chances are, at some point or another, somebody has wanted you to be an option for them. They wanted you as their friend, their lover, their best friend with benefits. And it’s easy to get caught up in the idea that somebody wants something from you when they don’t care about who it is they’re getting what they want from — which is exactly why I’m making my stance crystal clear: I am not an option for anyone.

If you want me as a friend, I’m your friend. But I’m not somebody’s “just in case” or “if something doesn’t work out.” I don’t exist to make someone feel better about their decision to play it safe. There is no safety in numbers. There’s only comfort in familiarity and familiarity that, for some reason, people believe that they can have with me.

The problem with being an option is that it implies that your value lies in what somebody does or doesn’t do. It means that you’re only an option if a person decides to keep you around, either as a potential romantic partner or as a friend. And if they decide to let you go, then suddenly, I no longer have value. I can be replaced. I don’t exist on my own anymore; my purpose has been fulfilled, and now I can fade into the background and be forgotten

In recent years, the world has gotten a little better about preexisting conditions, but not that much. You can still get fired for getting sick still have to pay more for your health insurance if you’re sick than if you’re healthy and don’t get sick much. You can still be denied a mortgage loan or fired after seven years of service simply because you have a preexisting condition. It shouldn’t have to be like this.

And yet, despite all of the progress made, we still have a long way to go. The idea that someone would be willing to let me go simply because they might not need me anymore is awful. It’s the same logic that helped put people with HIV on death row; It’s the kind of thinking that puts my life on hold because it doesn’t have to.

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But it’s not just my life that’s on hold, and it’s theirs. I’m not a car in somebody else’s garage; I’m my person with my own goals and dreams, and I get to decide who comes along for the ride. No matter how many times people try to make me an option, I’m always going to consciously choose not to be an option because nobody should have their dreams put on hold simply because somebody else didn’t want them anymore.

If somebody thinks that my dreams are too big for them, it’s time for them to start dreaming independently.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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