This is What I Know About Wanting
This is a photo I took during the Medieval Festival that started the first night I arrived in Castiglion Fiorentino.
And this is what I wrote the first week in response to the prompt: “Write about wanting something.”
(Note: The following is a work of fiction. This doesn’t mean it’s not true. Just that it’s not strictly autobiographical.)
This is what I know about wanting: it is painful. It is painful to feel the lack of something. And it is delusional to think that getting the something you want will relieve that pain. It won’t. There will be a moment, an instant, of pleasure in the getting, but then there will be the wanting of more. The wanting to keep what has been gotten. The wanting that turns into the fear of losing what one has. There is pain in that fear. And then sooner or later, the additional pain of the actual losing. Because sooner or later — and usually sooner than later — you will lose what you had. At the very least, it will become other than what it was. What was exciting becomes boring. What was new becomes old. What was interesting becomes tedious. Inevitably, what was wanted becomes something other than that. And then there is the wanting to get rid of it. The wanting of something new to replace what is now old, and so again, and on and on, there is still more wanting…and there is pain in that.
I wanted her to want me.
I wanted her hands in my hair and her mouth on my neck. I wanted the weight of her body. The salt. And the sweat.
And I got it. I got it all.
The heat and the musk and the teeth and the rest.
It was sweet.
But sweet like honey on the edge of a razor.
There is no resting there.
Only danger.
And wanting.
And the pain that comes with that.