My Ambition Feels Embarrassed

Dear Delyara, It doesn’t arrive proudly anymore. It arrives apologizing. I still want things. Space, money, work that feels alive, a life with more selfhood in it, more dignity, more room for becoming. But the wanting shows up already half-ashamed, as if wanting more after a certain age, after children, after fatigue, after disappointment, is somehow naive or indulgent. That’s the damage. Not that ambition died. That it got humiliated. And once ambition becomes embarrassed, it doesn’t move cleanly. It lingers. Whispers. Dreams at the wrong hour. Cries inside practicality. I know that version of ambition too well now.