You did not choose this. One day there was a cat, and it sat on something of yours, and that was apparently the end of the negotiation. Nobody consulted you, and nobody was ever going to.
Being claimed is a strange and wonderful kind of compliment, because none of it was earned. You did not win the cat over with a campaign of good behavior or a year of being reliably excellent. It assessed the situation, decided you would do, and moved in, and whatever it saw it saw quickly and has not reconsidered once since.
That is worth carrying around, because most of the best things in a life were recognized rather than achieved. The friend who decided early that you were theirs. The place that felt like yours on the first afternoon. The people who looked at you once and did not need a second opinion.
We spend a good deal of energy trying to deserve the good things, which is understandable and mostly unnecessary. A lot of what is best about your life arrived because somebody took one look and decided, and they were right to, and they have not changed their mind since.
For everyone who came home one day and found the decision had already been made for them.
