I still revisit the version of me who called that enough

Dear Delyara, Sometimes I think the deepest regret is not about what happened. It’s about what I accepted while it was happening. The smaller standard. The lower ask. The quiet self-abandonment dressed as patience or maturity or understanding. I look back and feel tenderness for that self sometimes. Other times I just feel grief that she did not know how much more was available, or allowed. That grief is difficult because it is not only about the past. It reaches into identity. Into worth. Into what I believed about what I could ask life for.