With or Without You

by Shari Low

The moments when you know that you have to make a decision that will affect the rest of your life. Do you take the new job? Do you buy the new house? Do you sell up and move abroad? Do you cut off the toxic friend who detracts from your happiness? Do you start a family? Do you tell a forbidden love exactly how you feel and damn the consequences? Do your choices affect the other people in your life? If you move a chess piece, does it change the game for other members of your family or your friends?

Perhaps our lives and loves are predetermined, our paths mapped out, and it doesn’t matter what twists and turns we take on the road, we still end up exactly where we’re meant to be.

What I do know for sure is that family doesn’t need to be related by blood. It’s the friends you choose to go through life with, the ones that surround you and walk beside you every day.

I’m choosing to believe that no matter what path we take, what decisions we make along the way, we still end up exactly where we were meant to be, with the people we’re supposed to be with.

Back in the real world, I find it reassuring to go with the belief that it’s all predetermined, that we’ll somehow find the people whose lives we’re destined to share – our soulmates, our lovers, our friends, our children – no matter what we do, where we go or what choices we make. There’s no right or wrong move. No mistakes. No missed chances or regrets. Just different roads that take us to where we’re meant to be. All we have to do is keep walking towards the happy ever after.