We Shouldn’t Feel Guilty For Wanting Something More

I like to pretend that I’m the girl who is okay with casual, who doesn’t mind being your fling and moving along a few weeks down the road. The girl who isn’t offended or hurt when she is blown off, the girl who has better things to do than spend time with you anyway. 

The independent, unattached, self-sufficient, okay-with-hook-ups girl that society tells me I should be. 

But I’m not that girl. The truth is, I fall in love easily – with words, with ideas, with situations and even with people. As much as I hate to admit it, you were no exception. 

From the moment I met you, you put me at ease – something that rarely happens. You understood me, the deepest, darkest struggles of my being, because you had been there. You let me know it was okay to still struggle, still wonder ‘why me?’ But at the same time you didn’t let me dwell or feel sorry for myself. You taught me to take a deep breath and appreciate the moment I was in – something that would later bite me in the ass when I realized that living in the moment is what you do, and you rarely think to the future – a place I’d have liked to have been. 

The truth is, I wanted to be the person you called when you heard good news, or even earth-shattering news. I wanted to be the person you brought home to your family and said “This is her, this is the one I’ve been waiting for.” I wanted to drive in a comfortable silence with you, your hand resting on my leg like it was the most natural thing in the world. I wanted to glance up and find you already looking at me, breathing the same air, thinking the same thoughts. 

I shouldn’t have felt like something was wrong with me for wanting to build a deeper connection with you, for wanting you to want to label us, to stake claim. 

But admitting these desires made me feel weak, as if I was a less independent woman. 

As soon as I admitted that, god forbid, I actually had feelings for you, guilt washed over me. Guilt that I couldn’t just let this be what it was, that I couldn’t be content to not throw a label on things. Guilt that you meant something to me, when you weren’t supposed to. Guilt that jealousy reared its head once in a while. Guilt that maybe, just maybe, I did want something more. 

But, you see, I was stuck. Did I admit this and chance losing you completely, or continue the way we were, tucking away those rare moments, falling in love with them little by little and hoping someday they may amount to something, but pretending not to care when they didn’t?

But I didn’t do either, because I knew what would happen – you weren’t looking for something serious, I couldn’t force that. Instead I shut down and shut you out with no explanation (apart from this one, which you will likely never read). And for that I am at fault, but I was protecting myself and my own feelings above yours. 

I won’t apologize for that, just like I won’t apologize for reading more into us, for wanting something more – because wanting something more is a natural human craving, not a sign of weakness or codependence. It doesn’t make someone less self-sufficient, less content, more pathetic. It makes them normal. 

We would all do well to remember that.