on wanting

when was the last time you got exactly what you wanted?

i ask because this year, it seems to me, has been one defined by disappointment, dismay, outrage. at the best, it seems, we are “surviving,” enduring the long slog between let downs, offenses, fears. we are “getting by,” it seems — the tone i hear tends to be both valiant and glum, an admission that none of us is living the life we want, but hey, at least we’re healthy/housed/sane.

and i’m glad to hear those caveats, the at-least-performative admission that privilege does, as ever, play a role in our experiences of this time. that there are systemic vulnerabilities suffered by some, and entrenched protections enjoyed by others.

i’m a believer that “pain is pain,” but also that some pain has historically been given much more credence, much more value in our society, while other pain has been denied, erased, mocked, or even glorified.

so, i think the times and spaces in which we choose to express our pain is something we should all give thought to. sensitivity, to ourselves and others, is so critical when we’re all living so close to the edge.

that said, i want to go back to my question:
when was the last time you got exactly what you wanted?

i wonder what even comes to mind when i say that. do you believe in “getting what you want”?

***

for most of my life, i was afraid to desire anything. “wanting” was selfish, an act of ingratitude towards a God who, it was presumed, had ordained whatever conditions we found ourselves within. on my father’s side, “Allah’s will” was invoked to explain the unexplainable, and “if God wills” used, at times, to deflect questions about the future.

on my mother’s side, a version of Christianity that seemed to glorify suffering, treating pain almost as a virtue unto itself. Jesus Christ was cited, of course, as the ultimate example (a tortuously simplistic reading of that mystic’s life, i’d later decide). this bled into a kind of fatalism — when tragedy, injustice, or disappointment came, we were told it was “God’s way of building character,” by “refining us” through suffering. we were told to pray for more patience, more “contentment,” rather than seeking a way to change our circumstances.

surely, there is something to be said for contentment, for the humility to “accept what i cannot change,” as the serenity prayer goes, but i’ve come to see the dangerous side of this thinking. chalking everything up to God’s will, shoehorning systemic injustice or genuine pain into a story about a cosmic plan for my individualized godliness, can lead to immoral complacency.

not only that, but it taught me not to trust myself. it taught me to silence my intuition, the still small voice inside of me that would tell me who i am. such a sense of selfhood does not blend well with the self-effacing conformity demanded by this brand of religion — especially for a woman, a queer person, anyone of color.

anger, doubt, desire — the stuff of a full, thinking human being in the midst of a flawed world — these were not welcome. after all, hunger for pleasure, for a tasty-looking morsel, is what led to the downfall of Eve, and through her, mankind.

and so i stifled my truth, denied myself expression, and choked back my outrages at what felt broken around me.

i took what i was given and i performed gratitude, for myself as much as others.

and i swallowed shame to cover over the parts of me that still had questions, still felt anger, still wanted “more” — more space, really. more honesty.

it became second nature to silence the voice in me that questioned whether “this was it,” — a life of stoic, obedient, contrived poverty. the voice that said that joy, curiosity, and even outrage were never sinful. that they were actually points on the compass of inner wisdom i’d been born with. that perhaps i could follow them to freedom.

instead, i began to equate pain with virtue — if i was suffering, at least i could be sure i wasn’t being greedy. muting my grief or rage, “surrendering” to pain as God’s will, would mean purification of my soul. salvation.

this inability to acknowledge pain has its own dangers. i put up with emotional exploitation, sexual harassment and even assault with very little protest. i thought it was okay to hurt.

once, i broke my pelvis in several places during a bicycle accident. when i was taken to the hospital, however, they determined i was only bruised. i was so composed — even as i expressed my deep concern that something was “really wrong,” even as i told them, calmly, that my pain level was “ten” — they dismissed me as “faking it,” a drug-seeker. they made me walk to the bathroom for a urine sample.

afterward, they wheeled me into a hallway and left me there for nearly 12 hours, as i passed in and out of consciousness, shivering and vomiting from the pain. (when they finally x-rayed me, near midnight, the doctors returned ashen-faced, disbelieving. the machine had told a truth i was unable to convey. i would spend the next several days in and out of surgery).

there’s at least one verse i learned in my childhood that has stayed with me,
growing more precious with time:
“the truth will set you free.”

if only more of us were given permission to tell our truths.
to name our pains,
and our desires.

(this is not an anti-religion essay, by the way. it is just a fleeting gesture at the ways that misogyny, homophobia, racism, and capitalism, among other abominations, can so easily move through religious channels. it’s the work of many lifetimes to disentangle these unholy ties, but there are admirable folks who are doing so, and i support them).

***

my youngest sister, as a toddler, was notoriously unruly. she stampeded, she threw fits, giving no mind to who was around, or where she was. i remember how cowed my mother looked, at times — the sermonettes she’d given her other children, about how “life isn’t about getting what you want,” seemed to make no impression on this little one. her first word was “more,” and, when her vocabulary expanded a little further, she developed a slogan that is now an inside joke among our family:

“i want what i want! i want what i want. . . now!”

i remember the shock of those words, the impression they made on me, by then a seven-year-old well-trained in the virtues martyrdom. “that’s original sin,” my mother explained of my sister’s outbursts. “we’re all born selfish.” she wasn’t calling her daughter evil, exactly — but she was pointing to that raw, innate sense of self-agency and calling it dangerous.

i no longer believe that we were born to suffer; i see, in fact, how such a belief has been used to perpetuate abuse and oppression at its worst, and at best robbed so many of the chance to live humanely. i no longer believe that the simple, intuitive desires that speak within us are evidence of some inborn flaw. of course, greed can run amok; of course, we can be corrupted. but the reflexive mistrust in my very nature? that is something i’m trying to unlearn.

so i’ve spent the last few years normalizing the very idea of desire. the thought that aspiring to have or do something simply because i “want to,” simply because it calls to me as something “good and pleasing” — as that fruit called to Eve — is still so hard to accept. it was not until meeting my current partner, a lavish and relentless model of epicureanism, that i began to make any room at all for pleasure.

and i have spoken with many people — most of them women or queer — who share a similar mistrust for anything that feels good. we’ve been so well trained. we’ve been told, either through discipline or neglect, that we only deserve so much. that what is “right” and “enough” for us is not ours to choose, let alone to take. that we must submit to what is prescribed to us by the systems in which we live.

the irony, of course, is one of the primary systems in which we live — capitalism — actually glorifies desire, markets personal satisfaction as the ultimate good. in fact, not getting what one wants is seen, somehow, as a failure — a failure to “lean in,” a failure to work hard enough or smart enough to acquire the markers of success.

the neon, the filtered poses. the surround-sound of competition, comparison, marketing. the Rule of Motion: we must always be striving towards the things we implicitly lack. the sense that to cease such motion, such accumulation, would be to somehow cease existing, or at least to become somehow illegible. how do i know myself, my worth, if i’m not moving, making, acquiring, or doing?

we are fed mantras, told to “follow our bliss,” but the implicit message is much stronger: only certain things are acceptable to want, only certain types of achievement and acquisition will render us “good,” “successful,” or “happy.”

we are not free to want what we really want —
much of which might be un-commodifiable,
unquantifiable,
or speak to the inhumanity of the current system.

(what if we all just stopped for a moment
and talked about the desires,
the needs and the pains,
that we share?
what if we spoke of
universal healthcare?
a living wage?
no, no,
just keep hustling and hacking,
performing and promoting
your individualized,
productive
and product-based lifestyle.)

this is the further, more tragic irony to me, the way this form of indoctrination can also silence our true desires. i’ve spent plenty of time on the treadmill of achievement, chasing accomplishments and “lifestyles” that i thought i wanted. i felt motivated and eager to achieve them, to perform them, and perhaps i did enjoy myself at times.

just like the religious narratives that taught me to lie to myself — to call pain “good” and hunger “sinful,” — capitalism taught me to parrot certain scripts about what i wanted to do, to be, to have. to chase these wild geese, i had to likewise stifle my inner voice, avert my eyes from the things i truly wanted but which did not map on to the course of upward mobility, of optimization.

but the work of this year for me has had a lot to do with stripping away these artificial scripts. there are so many. i find myself wading through these shed layers, like ankle-deep piles of dried leaves, their brittle crunch a soundtrack of separation. i feel a little bit naked, a little goose-bumped and exposed, but the sense of breeze on my skin tells me this is the right direction, to keep moving.

some days shame comes surging back, reflexive guilt at the smallest act of self-assertion, of satisfaction. making art “for myself.” saying “no” to a toxic conversation. taking a fifteen minute break to sip coffee with cream. (even chopping off my hair, which i’d been so long told was an asset in the economy of the male gaze). all of these things have left me seized with fear at times, worrying that i’m becoming “too much,” “selfish,” or “soft.”

other days, i must check my mindless drift towards consumption and/or productivity. do i really need to clock one more hour of work? do i really need to buy that new candle? do i want to pitch this story, or attend this event, or wear these clothes — or are they simply the trappings of someone else’s idea of who i ought to be?

it’s so much easier to outsource our identities — whether to a religion or a brand or a well-meaning mentor. it’s so much harder to look within, and to speak truly about the strange or unruly things i find there.

maybe i need to overcorrect for a while. to go back to that image of my little sister, her curly hair flapping as she tossed her head, her baby-voice pitched to some impossible volume, yelling “i want what i want.”

no apologies.

perhaps this all sounds a little out of touch, when the world around us seems every day like a ten-alarm fire.

and yes, it’s all wild and tragic out there, and there’s less than 50 days left til election day (vote early if you can! make a plan! hound everyone in your life to make sure they’re registered and ready to cast their ballot!) and the science denialism is getting worse by the hour and the inhumanity of white supremacy continues to mutate and scramble for power and. . .

and i think if we don’t maintain some sense of ourselves,
as human beings within it all,
we risk losing even more.

i think even of the idea, so often lamented by liberals, that people frequently “vote against their own interests” (i.e., “poor whites” voting for conservative candidates out of a sense of racist outrage, only to have those candidates betray them by eviscerating social programs, etc). the idea that people would bring harm on themselves out of hatred for others — i wonder where, and how, these people so lost their own inner lights.

and yet i see how, too, so many of us may have done similarly — allured by promises for things we’re led to believe we want. ensnared by narratives that appear true, but lead us all into further bondage.

and how, in a year as convoluted and broken as this one, how warped and afraid we’ve all felt at times.

and so i suppose in this year of not-getting, of being denied so many of the things we wanted to be doing and having, clarity might be our one consolation. the chance to ask ourselves who told us to want, or withhold, the things that we did. to feel our way back to a more true place, where our desires and our pains are spoken more plainly, and with greater equity. where permission to be ourselves is not threatened or contingent or traded for, but simply given. where the more humane and wacky and beautiful things we actually want are allowed to come forward. where anger is welcome too, as a necessary fire that lights up the contours of justice, and its absence.

maybe, once we’re all free to “want what we want,” we will find a better path towards it, too.

(this essay was originally published in my weekly newsletter, [me]re. please subscribe here to join the conversation!)