Relearning How to Want

What happens when you stop disappearing

and start choosing yourself again…

I used to think I had no choice.

I had a good life, on paper. A husband. Kids. A home. I was needed. Useful.

But somewhere along the way, I disappeared.

I stopped playing my music.

Stopped choosing where we went for dinner.

Stopped asking for what I wanted—because I already knew it wouldn’t matter.

My opinion was asked for, but often ignored.

It wasn’t abuse.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It was erasure.

I’d learned how to make myself small and agreeable: not to rock the boat, not to make life harder than it already was.

We were raising kids with unique needs. Living in crisis. I told myself,

Does it really matter if I don’t get to listen to my music?

Who would I even want to listen to anyway?

So I stayed quiet. I shrank. I deferred.

And over time, I became so invisible… I was even invisible to myself.

I lost the energy to care. It was easier to let others decide… because they were going to make the decision anyway. I was the mom. The wife. The one who held everything together. I knew everyone’s appointments, meds, favorite snacks. What would make them angry. How to soothe them all.

But no one knew what I needed. It felt like no one really saw me. No one really heard me.

Least of all… me.

Somewhere inside, I believed this was just what love looked like. To be good. To be quiet. To not need too much.

But over time, that belief began to crack.

It happened slowly. In whispers.

Like the first time I drove alone and thought to turn on my music.

Or the moment I realized I couldn’t remember the last time someone looked at me—not through me.

Or the slow ache of knowing I had asked, over and over, clearly and vulnerably, for what I needed…

and realizing I was never truly heard.

It may seem trivial; who really cares what music or food a person wants? But if you add up all those small, dismissed, wants over time, it chips away at a person. It harms a person. It makes a person feel invisible.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t used my voice. It was that it echoed into a space where no one was listening. I wasn’t met in those moments. Not because he didn’t care, but because he didn’t, or couldn’t, see me. And I stopped apologizing for being someone who wanted to be seen.

So I began choosing myself.

One small, trembling step at a time.

Not with fireworks, but with quiet rebellions:

• Speaking my needs, even if they weren’t met.

• Sitting in my car just to feel what I felt, without interruption.

• Asking, What do I want?, and not flinching at the answer.

• Giving myself permission to exist outside the roles I’d been surviving inside.

And now…

I’m relearning how to have opinions.

How to want.

How to need.

How to believe that when someone asks what I want for dinner, or what music I want to hear…

it’s safe to answer.

That I am worth answering.

That I am worth being heard.

That I am worth being seen.

Even now, years later, I still feel it in my body. Like when I’m on a date and he asks, What do you want for dinner? What music do you like? What drink do you want?

I freeze.

My nervous system goes on alert. I have to take a breath, remind myself- it’s not a trap.

This isn’t a test. I’m not being set up to be ignored. It’s safe to have an opinion. It’s safe to take up space. It’s safe to be someone who wants.

Healing isn’t a straight line. Sometimes, even in safety, the old fear shows up. But now I see it. I name it. And I stay present.

It has taken me a very long time to understand this, and I’m still learning to believe it fully:

I am worthy of love.

It was terrifying. And freeing. And lonely. And real.

This is what I want you to know, if you’re in this place, in the dim room of your own life, whispering, Is this all there is?

You are not broken for wanting more.

You are not selfish for craving light.

You are not wrong for needing to be chosen, especially by yourself.

You don’t have to blow up your life overnight.

But you do have to begin.

With one decision. One boundary. One song that’s yours alone.

This is the work of reclaiming your light. Of stepping back into yourself after years of dimming, disappearing, deferring.

It won’t be easy. But it will be worth it.

Because you’re still in there.

And she is brilliant.