I Feel Cheap Inside

Dear Delyara, I don’t mean poor in the simple practical sense. I mean altered. Money pressure has changed the emotional quality of my inner life. It makes me think in reduction before desire. It makes me cut from myself first. It makes comfort feel suspicious, and little pleasures feel like things I have to justify with evidence. I hear myself saying no in my head before I have even fully wanted something. And the saddest part is how normal that has become. It’s not only that I can’t afford everything. It’s that scarcity has become moral inside me. It has taught me to become smaller than I truly am before life has even asked me to. I hate what that has done to my sense of worth.