What Men Say When They Don't.....I CHOOSE PEACE OVER POTENTIAL by Julianna Rowe

  ACT VI  Truth:   What Men Say When They Don't........

 A series on language, clarity, and the quiet announcements people make before they disappear.  Hosted on The Happy News Lady       While these pieces focus on  men, the language of avoidance isn’t gendered. 

I Choose Peace Over Potential

There was a time when potential felt like everything.

What something could be, might become, or what it almost was.      

You held onto that, you believed in it, and you invested in it. Because potential is powerful. It keeps you hopeful and it keeps you trying. But it also keeps you STUCK.

Because potential isn’t real. It’s only a possibility. Its only a maybe or a someday. And someday has a way of never arriving.

So you wait and you explain. Then you adjust and then you give a little more. All the while thinking:

“If I just hang on a little longer…”

But peace doesn’t live there. Peace doesn’t come from hoping someone becomes who you need them to be. Peace comes from accepting who they already are right now. Not the version you imagined nor the version you hoped for. Especially not the version you tried to help them become. 

The version they are. And when that version no longer aligns with you…That’s your answer. It’s not giving up. It’s not failure. It’s clarity.

Choosing peace doesn’t mean you didn’t care.
It means you care about yourself now too.

“I didn’t lose the potential… I chose peace instead.”