Choosing Life for Myself
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
By DK Hillard
There have been times in my life when choosing life wasn’t an inspirational idea. It was a decision I had to make because I knew what could happen if I didn’t.
I’ve lived with levels of exhaustion that are hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t known that kind of depletion. There were times when my body felt completely empty of strength, my spirit so worn down, that I could feel how easy it would be to let myself slide in the other direction. Not dramatically in one fell swoop. Just by no longer reaching for the thread.
In those moments, I knew I had to choose.
And I always chose life.
I didn’t choose it because life felt beautiful. It wasn’t. I chose it because something in me believed I was here for a reason, and I couldn’t leave before I had fully met it. There was something I had to live long enough to understand, become, create, heal, and give form. That knowing carried me through years when my body had very little to give.
For most of my life, choosing life meant staying because the journey wasn’t complete.
But now I’m standing in a different place.
After decades of inner work, sacred ceremony, writing, healing, remembering, and bringing hidden parts of myself home, I know that I’ve fulfilled something essential. It’s not that my life is finished and I’m suddenly well. My body is still weak. My energy is still uncertain. I can’t look ahead and see a clear promise that life will become easier or more manageable.
That’s what makes this choice so honest.
There’s no great mission pulling me forward now. No unfinished destiny. What I’m facing now is much simpler and much harder.
Am I enough to live for?
Is this life, as it is, precious enough to choose?
Not the life I might have if my body healed. Or the life I might have with more energy, support, certainty, or a future that looked easier to trust. This life. The one I’m living now.
The one with fatigue, unanswered questions, quiet days, small meals, dogs at my feet, cloth in my hands, doctor appointments, fear that still rises, and beauty that still finds me in the middle of all of it.
Can I choose that life simply because it’s mine?
That question goes straight to my core.
Choosing life now can’t be tied to guaranteed improvement. If I wait until I know my body will recover, I haven’t really chosen. If I wait until life feels easier, I’m still asking for life to prove it will brighten before I step all the way in.
But I can’t heal from a place where I haven’t fully chosen to stay.
So this choice has to begin here. It may be as simple as eating because my body is worth feeding. Lying down because I need rest. Using the tools that support me. Walking to the studio. Writing one paragraph. Letting my dogs be part of my life instead of moving past them on the way to more work.
It may look like choosing small moments of pleasure without justifying them.
That’s new for me.
It’s the most intimate choice I’ve ever made.
To stay, not because I owe my life to a purpose, but because I belong to myself.
To turn toward this imperfect, uncertain, still-beautiful life and say: yes, even this.
If this speaks to something you, I invite you to follow the thread at www.dkhillard.com, where writing, art, and story become part of the path back to ourselves.
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