Why I Stopped Apologizing for Wanting More
For years I made myself smaller to make life easier for everyone else. This is what happened when I stopped apologizing for wanting more.
by
I was really good at shrinking.
I said sorry when I asked for what I needed. When I took up too much space in a conversation. When I wanted something that wasn’t being offered. When it wasn’t even mine to say sorry for.
I apologized with my tone, my posture, my silence.
I was a master of making myself smaller.
I softened my edges. I laughed things off. I made my desires polite, palatable, easy to ignore. I told myself I didn’t really need the deeper connection, the wild joy, the thrill.
I could settle.
But the truth?
I was starving for it.
I dreamed of more. More intimacy and depth. More touch and honesty. More connection. More slow mornings, more late-night laughter, more art, more mess, more moaning, more meaning.
And for a long time, that made me feel greedy. Dramatic. Ungrateful.
Like there was something wrong with me for not being satisfied with the life I had.
But the more I pushed myself aside, the louder the ache became.
I started noticing how often we’re taught to shy away from our own wanting. How desire is dressed up as selfishness. How people are praised for being easy to please.
That was me.
The “pathological people pleaser.”
And I decided I didn’t want to live like that anymore.
I don’t want to be digestible.
I don’t want to be “chill.”
I don’t want to spend my one wild, precious life pretending gratitude for crumbs when I’m truly hungry for the feast.
I want more.
And not in a hustle, grind, “never enough” kind of way.
I want more awe.
More adventure.
More truth.
More risk.
More beauty.
More real.
More pleasure, in the most unapologetic ways.
So I don’t say sorry anymore when I ask for softness, or passion, or honesty, or time. I don’t dilute my desires to make them easier to swallow. I don’t make myself smaller so someone else can feel big.
I’m grateful for the version of me who learned to survive on so little.
But now I reach for more.
Because I deserve it.
We all do.
Life is meant to be sucked dry - not tiptoed through.
No apologies.
Just more.
