I do not remember the first time I felt expensive.

I only remember deciding that I never wanted to be again.

Nobody sat me down and said, "Dream smaller."

Children are clever.

They do not need instructions.

They overhear sacrifices.

They knew which sigh means money was leaving.

They memorize conversations not meant for their ears.

They learn the language of tired eyes and unpaid bills.

They notice which dreams are celebrated, and which dreams leave the room a little quieter.

Somewhere between love and survival, they begin editing themselves.

There are children who dream.

And there are children who calculate.

One asks, "Who do I want to become?"

The other asks, "How much will that cost?"

I was the second child.

Not by birth. By instinct.

I became suspicious of wanting.

Every desire arrived carrying an invoice.

Every ambition felt like something someone else would eventually have to pay for.

So I became careful.

Not with money. 

With myself.

I learned to admire dreams from a distance.

To choose what asked the least of everyone around me.

To celebrate opportunities that were affordable, not necessarily the ones that made my heart race.

People called it maturity.

They called it wisdom.

They said I was considerate.

Nobody noticed that a child had started negotiating with her own existence.

Some children rebel.

Some children demand.

Some children become difficult.

Some children become easy.

Painfully easy.

The kind of child who never asks twice.

Who apologizes before speaking.

Who quietly convinces herself that love is something you earn by requiring very little.

The kind of child everyone is grateful for.

The kind of child everyone forgets to ask,

"What did you give up to become this easy?"

Years passed.

 kept achieving.

I kept surviving.

I kept being grateful.

But gratitude is a strange thing when it grows without boundaries.

If you are not careful, it begins to wear the clothes of guilt.

Every sacrifice someone made for me became a debt I believed I had to repay.

Every kindness became an invoice.

Every opportunity became another reason to apologize for existing.

I stopped asking, "What do I want?"

And started asking,

"What will inconvenience everyone the least?"

The frightening thing about becoming considerate is that people begin to love how little space you occupy.

Not because they are cruel.

But because your disappearing makes life easier.

You become dependable.

Selfless.

The good child.

No one notices that every version of you they celebrate is a version that needed less, asked for less, dreamed less.

Then one day, you wake up an adult.

Someone asks, "What is your dream?"

And you realize you do not know.

Not because you never had one.

But because every dream you ever held first had to survive a courtroom inside your head.

"Could we afford it?"

"Would it burden someone?"

"Is this too much to ask?"

Maybe next year.

Maybe when everyone else is okay.

Maybe when I have earned it.

I have spent years believing that love looked like becoming lighter.

Smaller. 

Easier to carry.

I thought this was kindness.

I thought this was gratitude.

I thought this was what good children did.

Perhaps I was wrong.

Perhaps love was never asking me to disappear.

Perhaps gratitude was never meant to become guilt.

Perhaps the people who loved me were making sacrifices because that is what love does, not because they were handing me a lifetime of debt.

And perhaps the child who spent years trying not to become expensive deserved to dream

before she learned how to calculate.

I still catch myself shrinking.

Still apologizing for needing.

Still measuring my dreams against someone else's sacrifices.

Healing, I am learning, is not becoming less considerate.

It is believing that I can be deeply grateful without making a home inside guilt.

That I can honour every sacrifice made for me without sacrificing myself in return.

That maybe, just maybe, 

I was never meant to spend my life repaying love.

Only receiving it well, and passing it on.