I miss wanting things without immediately feeling embarrassed by the wanting

Dear Delyara, That may be one of the hardest losses to name. I still want more. I do. But the wanting itself now often arrives with shame attached. Too old for this. Too late. Too risky. Too unrealistic. Too much. Too messy. Too inconvenient to the current structure of family life. Too visible. Too likely to fail publicly. I don’t think ambition disappeared in me. I think it got humiliated too many times. Now desire enters a room already apologising for itself. And that is a painful way to live because it means even hope has become self-conscious. I miss the cleaner version of wanting I once had — the one that moved before it held a committee meeting about whether it had permission to exist.