The Illusion of Being Chosen

The urge to be a priority comes from never having been one.

For the longest time, even the illusion of being wanted made me happy. Just the faint suggestion that I mattered. That someone saw me.

But reality always whispered back — it’s just an illusion. One I created. One that was never truly shared.

I’ve poured so much of myself into others. Loved deeply, cared endlessly — trying to make them happy, trying to keep them close.

Because deep down, I feared losing them. Mostly, I just love and care — without limits, without expecting it back.

But sometimes I wonder: what if I were them?

What if someone loved me the way I love?

But I’ve realized… even that care, that love, that effort — it was also selfish in a way. Shadowed by fear.

Fear of never being enough.

Fear of not being loved.

Fear of being forgotten in the backdrop of someone else’s life.

Fear of living a life that never truly mattered to anyone.

Fear of loneliness.

Fear of never being picked.

So I tried.

I tried hard to stay in the picture — even if it meant clinging to the unnoticed corner of someone else’s canvas.

You overdo.

You overshare.

You overlove.

You blur lines that shouldn’t be blurred.

You hand over keys to doors you swore you’d keep locked.

You let people in, even when it costs you pieces of yourself — all for the desperate hope of being chosen.

But it doesn’t work like that.

People don’t choose each other freely — not the way we hope they do.

Most ties are built on convenience, or familiarity, or moral obligation.

We act not out of pure want, but because of invisible chains — the unspoken rules we were born into, the roles we learned to play.

And so I’ve learned:

Boundaries are everything.

Even after pouring out the pain in words that feel pointless, there’s still a thread that hopes —

that someday, somewhere, someone will erase the boundaries...

and make me feel like I am the world and the air,

the care and the love,

the light and the sight they never, ever wanted to miss.

Ironic.

Maybe not in all the frames —

but just one.

Just one frame —

where the space was given, not asked for.

Offered, not earned.

Deserved — and never fought for.

Just one frame.