do you want it?

take this as a sign or don't

I think I want it. Not a person, not a purchase. A thing. An experience, if you will. Ancient feeling, rare but familiar as they come. The thing that is to be wanted, borne by its only purpose to instigate, is a hard one to obtain. The pathos of it all doesn’t scare me — wouldn’t be the first time, I have a degree in wanting and necessitating and clawing and getting and wanting again, though rarely backed by science or persuasion.

The thing I want shall not be named, not out of secrecy or snobbery, but in honor of my good-faith belief that wanting grows best when preserved in a sealed little jar and stored in the greenhouse next to the carnation crops, left to marinate in its juice against the urge to turn my insides out and be the most interesting person in the meeting room, dragging all the attention away with look-what-I’m-up-tos like a selfish husband hogging the sheets at night. No, I’ve gotten too classy for that, and I’m letting the wanting bloom in silence, honing it behind the scenes in the dark, maybe with a candle to allow for more clandestine thinking and an ambiance of promise. Wanting is a deep, callous path, converging toward the meridian, the one I’ll walk if you let me, the one I’ll escape when I’ve finally bored myself to death.

In the back pocket of my jeans, there’s a crumpled piece of paper. I reach for it when no one’s looking. Paper is versatile, it contains many things and, depending on the lettering sequence, can lead you many places — some less desirable than others. But I’ve never had a piece of paper quite like this before. It’s not the kind you board a plane with, carrying you right back to fateful summer nights where you’d sleepwalk him through the hazy under-the-breath confessions resulting in hysteria. His confessions, your hysteria, naturally, as all things go. That time, we faced inconveniences equal in turmoil: mine was an undying longing, his was a three-hour layover in Zurich. Same thing. To say I’d written about it would be saying nothing — for a little while, I breathed it and savored it, unable to write about anything else. In the end, I found out cursing the perpetrator from the very top of Mount Rainier gets rid of the wanting, and though I still write about it, there’s enough distance between the past and future for me to know I do not want it anymore. No. This is different. I swear.

Okay, well, if it’s not about a man, is it about knowledge? Hardly. The piece of paper is not the one you submit once you’ve chiseled the marble walls of your Magna Cum Laude prison enough, severing the brain-obtained accolades because you’d set wanting in motion once and made yourself too busy, too unavailable between the curriculum and highbrow enlightenment to look back with questions like What was it that you wanted? Before they taught you how to want more efficiently? Are you into desire or safety? You look like the type of girl who’s soooo into safety. Safetycore. Big deal. Knowledge is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not enough.

Funnily, the piece of paper is not the $333.33 bill I stole from an oil billionaire to restore some balance in the world or to spite him, either. Angel number dollar bills exist, didn’t you know? I manifested them through hard work and Tarot readings on TikTok. Though I like breaking my Robin Hood shoes in, communal dinners and all, post-Soviet upbringing, you mustn’t take me for an honest person because I will sell out at the first opportunity that presents itself. You’ll build a tombstone for my morals and engrave something simple like “Here lies she, the woman who wanted success more than she wanted the truth. Many such cases.” Make it Latin for dramatics. Multis talibus. Whatever.

The piece of paper is blank, waiting to be written on. Just a square. If I wanted to be taken seriously, I would’ve mastered cursive for this. And If I want to take myself less seriously, I should master Papyrus, they said. I scoffed because that is one shitty, shitty font that reminds me of everything wrong with 2009, and the whole notion is ridiculous, so it’s better if I go home for you guys are strange and sugary sweet and you’ll never understand the magnitude of how intravenously deep wanting runs because you’ve never had to fight for it.

It’s all miracles everywhere all the time. I’ve seen it happen to others, so how am I any worse or less deserving? I put my headphones on as the choir yells out please please please make it happen, show me the path. Sure, I’ll build another shrine around the wanting and lay out the foundation for both triumph and failure, the fruit and the fruitless. Tell me what to do next and I’ll do just that. But I thought wanting was an act of desperation? Maybe it just always feels like that, except for when it doesn’t. It’s just you and me, reader, fighting for the greatest spot in the wanting marathon. I’m sweating silence as you drag me through the fields because you know this feeling very well, too. I don’t have to speak another word because you understand me.

I’m scared, not of the wanting, but because there’s no going back from it, only forward. It’s not an empty bottle kicked to the side of the road once you’re no longer thirsty. It changes you. Admitting to the wanting, though, is the scariest — that implies I don’t just want in silence, but dare to act on it, too. I’ve set the pace and it’s too late now to go back, to hide from it, to Whac-A-Mole it back where it belongs. I’ve already asked my spirit guides for help and consulted with my favorite thinkers. I have to do this now, if not for me then, at least, for them to not think less of me. I think I’m just embarrassed to go all out for me, I whispered, and my friend said Valerie, you’ve gone all out for men before, why not give yourself the same treatment?

Can I make you sign an NAA? A Non-Accountability Agreement. It’s where I make you pinky promise not to hold my wanting against me; especially if it amounts to nothing. I’m going to reach far and I’m going to fail many times, I’m aware. But I promise to go on. I’ve been good at wanting, always, but never half as good at faith, and one needs both for proper alchemy.

I know wanting lives in your chest cavity. I know that as you’re reading this, you know exactly where that wanting leads you. The answers are within you, friend, they aren’t external forces. You might want to take that first step, come spring or impatience. You might want to bring that piece of paper with you. Let’s both want and fail and want some more.