The Soft Rebellion of Wanting More

Day 122 – March 25, 2026

Lately I’ve been thinking about how quietly rebellious it is to want more.

Not in the greedy, self-help, “upgrade your life in five easy steps” kind of way. I mean in the real way. In the woman way. In the aftermath way. In the deeply human way where life has already shown you some of its ugliest machinery and you still somehow, stubbornly, almost offensively want more than mere endurance.

That feels rebellious to me.

Because I think there’s a version of suffering the world understands. The noble kind. The contained kind. The kind where a woman is wounded, yes, but digestibly. Graceful in it. Deep, but not disruptive. Hurt, but still pleasant enough to sit beside at dinner without ruining the mood.

I am significantly less interested in being that version.

And what I want now is not some cartoon fantasy of a perfect life. I’m not asking the universe for a clean plotline, a man with emotional range and excellent forearms, a perfectly regulated nervous system, and a kitchen that stays clean without me personally entering into a blood pact with it.

I mean something simpler.

I want a life that feels like mine.

I want more truth. More beauty. More room. More wit. More pleasure without the weird little shame tax women are expected to pay for wanting anything at all. More moments that feel alive instead of merely survived.

That wanting has been getting louder lately. And I’m trying not to treat it like a problem.

Because for a while, wanting felt complicated. It felt risky. Indulgent, even. When all your energy is going toward surviving, desire can start to seem like a luxury item. Something for later. Something for safer people. Something for women who weren’t busy trying to hold the emotional ceiling up with one hand while making coffee with the other.

But I am starting to understand that wanting more is not evidence of ingratitude.

It is evidence that I am still here.

Still in relationship with life. Still unwilling to accept a smaller emotional universe just because pain once moved in and acted like it paid rent. Still the kind of woman who knows there is more available than numbness, management, and fuzzy little versions of peace that ask me to betray myself in exchange for stability.

No.

I want the real thing.

Not louder. Not flashier. Just fuller.

Roger, for his part, wants more in a way I find spiritually clarifying. More snacks. More blankets. More proximity to me at all times. More outside. More inside. More whatever I’m holding, whether it is food, a sock, or emotional complexity.

His philosophy is refreshingly unembarrassed.

There is something to that. The refusal to apologize for appetite.

That may be one of the things I’m trying to relearn too. Not just how to survive with dignity, but how to want with dignity. How to let desire into the room without immediately trying to justify it, explain it, soften it, or make it useful enough to be socially acceptable.

Sometimes I want more because I am alive. That is enough.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And the soft rebellion of wanting more than survival and meaning it.