WHAT NETFLIX’S FIRST INTERACTIVE MOVIE, ‘CHOOSE LOVE’ REMINDED ME ABOUT MY OWN LIFE

I recently watched a movie called ‘Choose Love’ on Netflix. It’s the platform’s first interactive movie where you, as a viewer, can decide what the main character does in certain situations, and these choices that are made for her affect the entire movie’s timeline. Long story short, it’s about a woman who gets tangled up in a love square. She has to choose between three men to be her life-long partner: her long-term boyfriend who’s about to propose, her high-school boyfriend with whom she has a past, and a new man whose music she produces for work. Who she ends up with in the end is all up to the viewers.

It was actually a fun little thing that Netflix did with the movie. For a first experiment, it was definitely a 10/10 for me. At the end of the movie, you always have a choice to go back to whatever scenario you want and change the entire storyline. No matter the case and which path she chooses for herself in her personal life, as well as career wise, there’s always a happy ending for the main character.

The reality of it all is, though, real life is nothing like the movies; certainly not this movie specifically. In what works do we get a chance to press pause on life, have another person make our choices for us, and even get a reset button and start all over again if you don’t like the choice you made?

In real life, you only get one, and only one, change to make your decision, and that decision could affect you for the rest of your life! Believe it or not, a decision you made 10 years ago, good or bad, can and will affect you to this very day. I can tell you without a doubt that I made some pretty bad decisions years ago that affect my career path as an entrepreneur to this very day. I’m not anywhere near where I want to be in my career, and I feel that I would’ve been in a much better position if I were to make better business decisions when I was younger.

Being a creative person, and having a career that revolves around creativity, is very hard. It’s actually the hardest thing anyone could do in this day and age. Creativity is an art. And yes, writing DOES count. And in the past decade, social media influencing has become a business as well. I’d been doing blogging and (social media) influencing for the past decade. The reason why you haven’t seen any material from me that far back is because of my very, very bad decisions in the past. The biggest decision I ever made is giving up too easily because of someone else’s opinion of what I was doing and of what I was aiming to achieve. I was trying so hard to please everyone around me and be the person that was on their level.

With that, though, I lost a sense of myself. These people weren’t my parents or anyone close to me. Nonetheless, I still was trying so damn hard to please them so that I would be laughed at or be bullied endlessly. Each time I gave up and deleted all traces of my hard work (it wasn’t just once that I gave up), including celebrities such as Kathy Hilton, Paris Hilton’s mother, noticing me on Instagram, I was ‘forced’ to start all over again. Now that I look back, it’s just heartbreaking to me that I allowed certain people in my life run all over me and dictate my life so much. It’s not like they actually cared about me at all. The fact that they bullied me and didn’t show me any support indicates just that.

‘Choose Love’ reminded me so much of my old life where I allowed other people to run it. In a way, the people who bullied me that way, who I thought were my friends, were the viewers of the interactive movie. But unlike in the movie, there was no reset button. There was no going back anymore to see where life would take me if I hadn’t allowed them to treat me that way.

In the movie, the main character says to the viewer who made a decision for her, ‘I’m not blaming you.’ I could blame all those people from my past all I want. But at the end of the day, I allowed them to treat me the way that they did for many years until I had a complete breakdown and I said, ‘no more.’ People will treat you the way you allow them to treat you, so the only person I could really blame is myself.

My father-in-law, for one, is one person who has attempted to hold me back. He looks through my Instagram account and reads this blog. It’s true what they say about your biggest haters being your biggest fans. My father-in-law is example of that. He tells those who think would listen to him that all that I’ve written about him are lies, and he also tells them that I need to take all material down and apologize.

LOL!

That was the one and only way I could react to that information. I will never apologize to anyone for anything I do or say. I will never be controlled that way no matter how much anyone tries to do so. I’m not the weak, delicate disabled girl I used to be years ago. My decisions and any course of action are all mine and mine only. No one is ever allowed to dictate them. And the reason why I say I won’t be the weak, disabled girl as I was years ago isn’t necessarily because I was that girl; or at least intended to be that girl. I could write a lot more about him and his character, but I actually have a conscious. He can tell whoever he wants that whatever I’ve written about him is a lie, but the truth always comes back. Why would I even lie about something like that in the first place? My son could read this when he’s older.

I was most definitely perceived as that girl; still am. Except there was a period in my life where I DID allow other people to dictate my decisions and courses of action. It wasn’t that I intentionally allowed them to. Instead, it was that my brain took over me when my health deteriorated due to my epilepsy diagnosis. I’ve been saying this time and time again – epilepsy isn’t just about having seizures. It’s about everything that surrounds the seizures. My epilepsy diagnosis affected me mentally and emotionally. I allowed others to treat me like absolute sh*t for one reason or another. It was absurd, actually.

Going back to my previous point, ‘Choose Love’ reminded me of one specific person I was friends with during my struggles with epilepsy. I wouldn’t say he was even my friend as friend don’t treat each other the way he treated me throughout the many years we were friends, but nonetheless, I’ll call him a friend for the purpose of this blog post. He was actually initially my husband’s friend. We started hanging out and partying more and more in 2014, and in 2015, I became really good friends with his girlfriend.

The time we were friends was fun. All we did was party together, drink, and be the silly dumba**es who said stupid sh*t every now and then. When I say now and then, I mean probably at least once at every party. The emotional torture began just after my fateful car accident. I was having a very difficult time emotionally, mentally and physically. Because of that, I wasn’t able to find a job right after college. Hence, I went ahead with the non-traditional route, which was blogging and influencing – exactly what I’m doing now.

I was growing fairly fast at the time. I was so happy. Things were great for me. There was one person, however, that ruined my vibe, and that was my so-called friend, my husband’s friend, and my friend’s boyfriend – which are all the same person. My nontraditional route in my career path gave him a reason to laugh at my expense. It started when his friend made a silly comment that could’ve been forgotten about if the joke hadn’t continued for years to come. His jokes started out small and uneventful, but the escalated and became more hurtful as the years passed. His jokes became hurtful. He not only made fun at my expense for my career path, but he went on to laugh at my personal and even my health. I was made to believe that that type of behaviour as normal, but when his treatment of me became life-threatening, I stopped all contact with him altogether.

Watching ‘Choose Love’ reminded me of that period in my life, but not in a bad way. In an attempt to make that friend stop making fun of me, I tried to go the ‘normal’ route when it came down to my job. I closed down my blog and social media and attempted to get a ‘normal’ job and get a ‘normal’ business started. That was actually why I became a freelance writer. I worked as a freelance writer full-time for 5 years until the pandemic hit in 2020. It was a wonderful experience working as a freelancer. I learned a lot. But the point of it all is that the freelancing route wasn’t chosen by me, but rather that specific friend as a way for him to stop making fun of me. He still continued to make fun of me regardless for other reasons anyway.

I don’t regret working as a freelance writer at all. The one thing I regret is quitting my influencing work time and time again only to start over from scratch mainly because I was afraid of being judged or made fun of, specifically by that person. In a way, in that specific situation, I was ‘Choose Love”s main character and that specific friend was the viewer who made life-altering decisions for me. There’s one main difference, though, which is that in the movie, there’s a chance to go back in time and make other decisions. Real life, mine specifically, doesn’t work that way. The decisions I made years ago because of that person still affect me to this very day. I could’ve done and accomplished so much more if I didn’t allow him to affect my life so much. Hurt people hurt people. He was hurt and he found me as a target because I was his vulnerable target. It’s probably the same with my father-in-law. He thinks he can control my life, but he can’t and he’s hurt by it.

Real life is a funny thing. It’s almost unbelievable that some stupid, nonsense decisions we made years ago could affect us so much. But they can, both personally and professionally. At times, I feel like my bad decision making had my ambition for success go to waste. But then I remember that everything, even the the worst decision anyone can ever make, is a learning curve. I learned a lot by that decision, and I wouldn’t even necessarily call it a bad decision. It was a mistake, a bad one at that. Nonetheless, I’m just so grateful I was able to start over. I’m even grateful to have had that person in my life at that point in my life, because it’s thanks to him that I now know to never allow anyone to treat me with such disrespect. If I see anyone in my life not supporting me in any way, they’re going to be out of my life for good. It’s a simple as that.

I have to say, I’m so thankful for having watched ‘Choose Love’. It’s thanks to that movie that I realized how much I learned about myself and how much I’ve actually grown from my past. My past mistakes are there to guide me through my present and my future. I know I can’t make the same mistakes ever again. I can’t allow people to treat me however the f*ck they want. It’s especially true now as I have a little person I’m responsible for. I have to set a good example for HIM, and that’s something I always have to remember each time I have to make any decision for myself and my family.

To summarize this very long blog post in the simplest way I possibly can, it’s that ‘Choose Love’ reminded me that I can’t allow my life to be an interactive movie. It’s not about having anyone choose or decide anything for me. It’s about choosing myself. THE END.