Why Do We Apologize for Needing to Be Chosen?

There’s a quiet shame stitched into the seams of wanting. Not just wanting something—no, we’ve learned to be bold about ambition, about goals, about the curated dream lives we post in digestible squares. But the wanting to be chosen? To be someone’s definite yes in a world of soft maybes? That kind of wanting, we tuck under polite detachment. We make jokes. We pretend we didn't notice when they hesitated.

We apologize with our silence. With sentences that trail off. With the way we say “no worries” too quickly when someone forgets to show up, as if our worth is measured by how little space we occupy when disappointed.

When did needing connection become a flaw?

When did the ache to be seen—fully, wildly, without edit—become something we felt the need to shrink?

I used to think I was too much.

Too sensitive.

Too intense.

Too honest in a world that taught us to blink away the truth with emojis and distractions.

I learned to wrap my needs in disclaimers.

“I know this sounds clingy, but—” or “It’s not a big deal, really.”

It was always a big deal.

I just didn’t think I had the right to say so.

But here’s the thing no one tells you: the need to be chosen isn’t a weakness. It’s a longing as old as stars collapsing into themselves. We were born with this gravitational pull toward each other. We want to matter. We want to be picked not out of convenience, but out of clarity. To be the phone call they return. The person they reach for without calculation.

We want someone to say,

“I see you. I choose you—not because you’re easy, but because you’re you.”

And maybe that’s the part that terrifies us the most.

Because if they see all of us—the mess, the mood swings, the sacred chaos—and still walk away, then what are we left with?

So we preempt rejection with apology.

We become masters of emotional footnotes.

We dull our edges so we won’t scare anyone off, not realizing we’re fading ourselves in the process.

But I’m learning, slowly, that being too much is often just being more honest than others are comfortable with.

That needing to be chosen doesn’t make you needy.

It makes you human.

And yes, that need can run wild, distort reality, cling where it shouldn't—but at its core, it is a mirror reflecting our deepest desire:

To belong without performing.

To be held without asking.

To be enough, exactly as we are.

So here’s my soft rebellion:

I will no longer apologize for wanting to be chosen.

Not picked out of pity.

Not tolerated in doses.

But chosen—deliberately, loudly, with both hands.

And if that makes me too much?

So be it.

I’d rather be too much than never enough.

I’d rather risk the ache than live in polite, polished loneliness.