It should be freeing.
Loose and easy.
Liberating.
Like an eyes-closed-smile-in-the-sunshine exhale.
A relief.
But instead it is panic and pinball.
It is my brain flooding with questions and obstacles.
It is my fight or flight kicking in.
It is resistance where there should be flow.
It is anxiety where there should be simplicity.
It is midnight-in-December molasses where there should be slip-in-slide-in-August soapy water.
I wonder how something so innate, so natural, became something so full of effort and concentration?
I think I know how.
And I am working on it.
For my 30th birthday this year, all I wanted was to do whatever I wanted.
No holds barred.
The bumpers that usually frame the lanes of my life: removed. The lines and “shoulds” I typically carefully live between: erased.
Just for a day.
That is what I wanted most as I settled in to 30: to want unabashedly.
And yet, it was so hard.
The bumpers and lines are never more clear than when they are gone.
The training wheels never more apparent than when they are removed.
Like a prisoner newly released from her own confines, the freedom was overwhelming and I froze.
What do you want to do? my brain asks my Self.
Formally educated by Professor Society and Dr. Culture, my answer lies somewhere between what they want and what I think I should want.
I’ll do whatever you want, he says.
And it should be freeing, right?
Loose. Easy. Liberating.
But instead, I am choked up.
I have wants, sure.
I just no longer know how to want, and then act.
I know how to want, and then stifle.
how to want, and then assess the morality and projected consequences of that want
how to want, and then shame that want
how to want, and then pretend I want something else
I know how to want, and then lock that want away because it might make me fat. It might be expensive. It might make me “weird.”
I do not know how to want and then just… go.
But I am working on it.
My wants exist with lines and circles carefully drawn around them.
Any wants that exist outside these boundaries, well, no they don’t. My wants exist with rules and qualifiers attached to them like balls and chains. Any wants that desire to freely escape, well, they can’t.
As an example, here’s how the question “what do you want to eat/for Christmas/to do/etc” plays out in my head:
What do you want
that isn’t weird, that’s also healthy, that’s convenient, that’s also what he wants, that’s not too expensive, that won’t take too long, that doesn’t mess up anyone’s plans, that fits in your schedule, that takes all of your best interests into account (which are also influenced by society’s expectations of you and your body and your personality and therefore sort of not really your best interests but rather society’s most palatable version of you)?
I watch my husband sit on the couch for the 4th hour in a row on the first college football Saturday of the year. He sits in splendid bliss doing exactly what he wants.
I am clenching my teeth trying to figure out how.
I watch the girl in Target trying on shoes, strutting around all lopsided the way one does with a high-heel on one foot and a running show on the other. She FaceTimes a friend to ask her opinion.
I am gobsmacked.
I listen as the girl in front of me orders a donut with her coffee.
I long to be her.
I hear my younger sister cackling like it’s not the 100th time she’s seen this scene from The Office, her head rolling back as her mouth falls open.
My heart is envious.
All around me, I watch and listen to these unfiltered people. How do they do it? Exactly what they want. Are they ignoring the voices in their heads? How did they learn to do that? Do they not hear them? Is it only a select few of us?
The voices that warn me of laziness, of inconveniencing others, of calories and carbs and looking silly in public are the gatekeepers of my wants.
All of my wants must face these voices in order to come alive in the world.
I’m afraid few of them survive.
The voices in our heads can be so loud.
But I am working on it.