(written yesterday, after I gave up on being productive at all)

Today I lay in the grass and read Appetite by Caroline Knapp.  And then I cried for a little bit.

What is it about wanting things that feels so taboo?  What makes it wrong to want, wrong to need?

(because wanting, needing makes one vulnerable)

Why do I feel I’m not entitled to have what I want, to ask for what I need?

(because I want too much, I need too much)

And furthermore, what exactly do I want?  I feel this great emptiness, loneliness, a void that exists inside me that I fear will never (can never) be satisfied.

(because I want too much, I need too much.  It is a state of uncontrollable excess, of shameful raw desire, a state which leaves me weak and helpless.  And I feel somewhere deep inside me that no matter how much I have it will never be enough)

I want so badly oh so badly to be loved (to be worthy?  To be special?  To be important?  All of those roll into love for me) but at the same time I don’t believe that I am lovable at all.  I don’t believe that I am worthy of love.  I don’t believe that I deserve to be loved. 

I am cynical and think “true love” is mainly a load of crap.  There’s no one-true-soulmate.  There’s no love-at-first-sight (though certainly there is lust.  But how could someone feel anything more than that simply based on a glance?  Looks tell you next-to-nothing about a person beyond how attractive they are to you).  There’s no happily-ever-after, at least not without tons of effort and pain and tears.  There’s no guarantee of forever, not ever.  Feelings are too impermanent and malleable to rely upon.  And yet.  And yet I still want that kind of love you read about in fairy tales and romance novels, the kind that doesn’t exist.

I didn’t feel loved as a child.  I tried and tried to please, mainly adults in my life—teachers, coaches, authority figures—probably seeking parental love that I wasn’t getting at home.  My parents are not bad people.  They are not cruel.  My father is preoccupied with his medical issues.  My mother is preoccupied with my father and resentful of the life she could have had.  Neither of them are demonstrative at all, either verbally or physically.  I didn’t get hugs growing up.  I didn’t get “I love you”s.  I suppose they both do love me, in their own ways.  But I didn’t/don’t feel it.

What I did feel was abandoned.  Overlooked.  Unimportant.  Ignored.

And then I dated E and he cheated on me.  And then I dated M and turned myself into everything he ever even hinted that he wanted me to be.  And got rejected.  And then I dated D and let him in, let him see all of me that I am and was, even the parts that I had never shown anyone and the parts which I still cannot talk much about.  And got rejected.  And each of these boy-men said they loved me and that I was special and then none of them did and I was not.

I learned that I shouldn’t want things because I wouldn’t get them—what’s the point in wanting what you can’t have?  Better to suppress and pretend you didn’t need it anyway.

Now I’m learning to acknowledge my wants again and it’s terrifying because it’s too much too much too much.  And I feel I will never be satisfied.  I will be always alone and wanting.

[A thing that’s odd here and that I haven’t managed to tease out of my brain yet: why is it that I want so badly the romantic love?  I have friend-love.  I know that L will be there for me no matter what.  She loves me.  I know the same to a lesser extent for a couple other friends.  But somehow that’s not enough.  Part of it is probably because I am here and they are all in various other places around the globe.  But that’s definitely not the only thing.  Maybe it’s because I have this tendency to mix physical desire in with emotional desire?  Don’t ask; I don’t understand it well myself.  I just know that it’s very difficult for me to separate out the two.  As Cheap Trick put it, “I want you to want me.  I need you to need me.”  (This is the song that came on my ipod when I left my grassy spot.  Ohhh the lovely little coincidences in life.)  I want so badly to be loved.  I want so desperately to be wanted.]