Anonymous 4m 1,014
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
The Day I Chose Career Over Love
The day I chose career over love was the day I lost both love and career. I have always chosen career over love and kept thinking that being a workaholic made me a better person, when really, it just made me a lonely person. I’m not wealthy and I’m certainly not the guy women notice anywhere. I make light-hearted jokes, as not to offend the #metoo movement, and really, I often go unnoticed. I lack the confidence in myself to do just about anything and often go with the flow which appears as somewhat confidence, but not where it really counts. And then came the time when I had to choose: career or love.
I am not sure if I chose wrong. Had I chosen love at that time, I would have probably discovered that I could have had my career as well. Instead, I chose the career and with that career came a kind of love, not the perfect love, but a love that was sustainable, at least in the first few years, but then it became harder to tame, harder to control, harder to… be me. Rather than be me, I chose to hide, bury myself, in my work, in my business, in the business of others, and so long as I was working towards some type of money-sustainability, a job per se, getting paid for freelance work or whatever, I would figure it out. For a long time, it worked very well, and I was lulled into a false sense of a comforting life, that was mostly good, but came at a price: the price of anxiety and fustration for the reward of being able to manage my life as a workaholic.
The more I became a workaholic, the more I forgot about who I was, who I wanted to be, what I was trying to accomplish, until I forgot it altogether, for a few years. I forgot about the reason I moved across the country. I forgot about why I wanted to be with her. I forgot about who she was. I forgot about why I was after her for so long, why she was my rock. I kept myself busy, for no reason at all, when I should have been going after her, getting to know her, seeing if she wanted to be with me, around me, letting her know I wanted to be around her, making sure the universe knew that I had fell in love and wanted to be with this woman forever.
There was nothing she did but when I saw her, I knew. And I ignored it for too many years, as if it was a cold that would pass. It never passed. Life happened so fast, I had my chances… but I lost them all. For this, I try to keep living, try to keep moving on, focusing on my career and being a good person because that is all I have left. I could try to love again, but I know that anyone who is not her will be made to suffer. A suffering that no one should ever deserve. My desire to not be alone is what keeps me going, optimistic for true love, a love that goes beyond what I, myself, have ever experienced. It is just a love I know exists and is hopefully worth it, even if it means waiting for or dying for after never getting to experience it.
I wish I chose love and a life with her, to be with the one I wanted to be with, the one I spent all my life dreaming about, the one who was the only one who truly mattered in the world. And yet my soul had to help another soul along the way and got attached by accident. I took it too far because of outside factors not in my control that forced fear into me, and a survival mode kicked in, causing me to do things I would have never otherwise done. I cannot undo what I’ve done although it’s nothing bad. I just overlooked the one and chose a job and a lifestyle that kept me “in a comfort zone” that caused my life to pass me by way faster than I had ever thought possible.
I am probably going through a midlife crisis of realizing that I have two people in my life that I truly love. One who I met and fell in love with for a while, and that is a love that never dies, especially if you just realized that you two aren’t right for each other, but didn’t have a bad breakup, and one who I’ve never fallen out of love with… despite missing so many opportunities to let her know I have always loved her. I met her when I was younger and kept making choices that got me nowhere near her, and yet, I kept accepting that was the way it was supposed to be, became laid back, and just went with the flow. A costly universal mistake that I hadn’t realized I was making at the time, but cost me the future of my children, of my love, and my life. How can one ever undo this mistake?
I am the side of the coin that chose career, money, and love, prioritized in that order over love, career, and money. Whether it makes a difference, I am not sure, but it was not like I ended up being alone. I just ended up with someone who only tolerated my presence, rather than appreciated it, took it for granted, and I was guilty of doing that myself, but her attitude and personality paved way for me to be exactly how she wanted me to be, and I took it and ran with it. Ultimately, I ended up losing both the love of my life and the love of my life. The career lasted a bit longer, but that too, would be something I’d ride the wave with until there was no more.
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