Life Lesson in Wanting.

It starts as a rush of blood to my head. Everything slows down, I feel the space behind my eyes start to open up and it fills with static. A thick web begins to build within my head and gradually spreads through the periphery of my body. It’s like I am being hugged by quick sand. The world slows, and I am standing with the fridge door open staring into the void that I wish brought more opportunities, thinking “How did I get here again?”

As I hone in on this feeling, this heaviness and emptiness that engulfs every inch of me but my heart space, I start to feel the rush of emotions creep up. My throat clenches and I feel my mouth dry. My knees slowly buckle and I curl over, holding my own knees as the tears start to flow.

It used to not be this easy. I used to not feel this quickly.

My cat runs over to comfort me, I hear his loud purrs and they start to draw me back out of this cocoon I’ve enveloped myself in.

Safety outside myself. He reminds me its possible.

Though so far I think he is the only one I have consistently known it with.

My teacher.

The sadness starts to change shape.

The space behind my eyes begins to solidify.

I feel a hardness, a sharpness come to the forefront as I stand up.

My jaw clenches and I consciously open it wide and take a deep breath to help it relax again. It sort of works.

I begin to pace.

I feel a vibration pulse through my arms and around my heart as I wait for a next text. Cynically I sit watching my phone but at the core, in that stillness, I’m still thinking “This will keep happening. Why haven’t you learned your lesson?”

No.

That’s not right.

I know I am not meant to be hard.

I am not meant to be angry and alone.

I know I deserve to have my wants fulfilled.

To be loved.

To be acknowledged without prompt.

To be a priority.

But to say those wants out loud?

That’s the warm feeling in my core but not the comforting one.

This one feels like the heat emitting from a handheld mixer as Grandma overbeats the eggs for the scramble on a Sunday morning.

Soon it might start to smell like grinding metal.

It’s broken gears rusted by countless tears, not once oiled for fear of having more to lose it all.

So I sit. Lonely and afraid.

But also, comforted and content on my couch with my cat.

Both are true.

And so where do I go from here? What do I do to close this gap between loneliness and contentment, to expand my capacity for want with another and security in what happens when . . . when I get it, or it’s not meant, or it all falls apart.

Thing is, I don’t really think I have ever tried. I don’t think I have truly let myself want because I have continually chosen people who choose me to fulfill theirs but do not attune to those that are mine; Do not freely give with trust that they will receive in return.

I get it though, because I did that. And here we are.

But perhaps that trust is what I turn to now, knowing it will come back to me. I am deserving. I am allowed to want and to have those wants fulfilled.

This, a reminder and my permission slip.

Let it be yours too, if you need it.