"Choices" by Tina Wingham

Choices

by Tina Wingham

Do I stay or do I go?

The question followed me the way a fly follows rubbish. I had always been bad at choices. Every decision felt rigged. Hope or hopelessness—both ended in the same place, so I learned early to choose what made everyone else comfortable. It kept the stress down. It kept me useful.

Choices are gifts, after all. You can keep them, unwrap them slowly, learn their weight. Or you can hand them off, smiling, until one day you realise you’ve given everything away and the only thing left under the tree is something no one wants. Something with your name still on the tag.

My life had followed the instructions perfectly. Popular enough at school. Married on time. Children before the questions became inconvenient. Career built brick by brick. Holidays scheduled. Retirement planned. Hobbies selected like vitamin pills. A steady, predictable cycle that required nothing from me except compliance.

And I always complied.

Now as I sit on the bridge, I contemplate the gifts I had wasted. 

The stone beneath me is old and crumbling, seeping cold through my clothes. Below, the river slides over itself in endless repetition, polishing the same rocks it has polished for centuries. Willow branches claw at the air, thin and crooked, as if reaching for something they once dropped and never recovered.

I feel a shift inside me. Something stirring deep within, something that hasn’t stirred for such a long time. 

I had discovered over time that anything new inside me didn’t stay. It appeared like a flash of light, that just as quickly fizzled into darkness. Every time the feeling retreats. 

The hollow returned full force. It was always there.

It originally began as an ache low in my stomach, a dull pressure that reminded me I was still capable of feeling something, anything. Over time, even that grew tiresome. Now there was only absence. A clean, echoing cavity where something essential should be. 

That pitt became my protector, at least that is what I told myself.

When the emotional pain grew to unfathomable heights, I hardened myself. I imagined my body sealed in black plastic, airless and sealed tight. I buried myself in mountains. I drowned myself in lava. I built walls—stone by stone—until nothing could reach me. Eventually, I found the most efficient solution.

I imagined my heart wrapped in iron.

Not gently just Plates slotted over each other, piece by piece, tightened until there was no room left for it to beat freely. I worked carefully, obsessively, until nothing could hurt me. Until I felt nothing. 

If I could stop feeling, I could endure anything. I could become the robot I was meant to be until the end. 

The words came later. A chant I drilled into my mind until it erased everything else.

I have no thoughts.

I have no feelings.

I am no one.

For a while, it worked too. 

But standing here, on this bridge, the chant faltered. The iron casing gone. I was left with just… me. 

As I grip the stone to steady myself, it starts to crumble slightly under my fingers, grains flaking away like dead skin. I stretch my legs, joints grinding, and swing my feet out over the edge. The space beneath me vast and inviting. A sudden heat blooms on the soles of my feet—pins and needles that surge upward, sharp and insistent, as if my body is trying to scream what my mind refuses to hear.

I inch closer to the edge. Watching the river murmur below. The sound is hypnotic, soothing me. It smelled of a weird mix of wet earth and cut grass. The flowers bloomed somewhere behind me, unseen, their sweetness clogging and wrong.

I catalogue it all automatically. The sound. The smell. The feel of stone biting into my palms. A grounding exercise, my shrink told me once. 

Instead of grounding me, it loosens something.

Peace slides over me like a warm blanket on a cold winters' night. 

I lower myself over the edge.

For a brief, suspended moment, I am weightless. The wind tears at my clothes, rushes past my ears like applause. My skin prickles. My body wakes up too late, every nerve alight with terror and exhilaration tangled together so indistinguishably tightly. 

In the seventy-five years since my unwanted birth in July of 1950, I have finally made a choice that belongs to me alone. The gift I finally gave myself. It’s beautiful.

As the river surges to meet me, I understand the irony at last.

The first gift I kept for myself was also my last.