Want
And not being wanted
It is the most pathetic thing to beg someone to love you, to get on your hands and knees and prostrate yourself before someone else. And yet, somehow, in this patheticism, I find such beauty. There’s a perverse, masochistic pleasure derived from it.
My first ex-boyfriend wanted me so badly until he didn’t. The roles reversed, and I wanted him so badly. I wanted him so badly that my whole body ached, and my mind became completely deserted of any thoughts other than him. My entire universe had collapsed into one singular person and then one singular moment — a breakup. I sat on the tunnelbana, staring out the window as we crossed from Årsta to Södermalm, tears slipping down my cheeks to nestle uncomfortably in the collar of my sweater. The tracks went upward on a bridge, overlooking a stadium and then cargo ships. And all I could replay in my head was the final conversation, all I could think about was how things could be different. The love felt so desperate and all-consuming.
At Cafe Opera, right next to the water in Norrmalm, I bummed a cigarette off of a Danish man and let him kiss me, let him do really whatever. I wore a skimpy black dress that I had bought freshman summer to sneak into a club in Chicago and let a different man do whatever. The dress looked like a long tube when it hung on the rack, and it was so tight that I might as well have been naked. I liked the attention from it. I knew I looked good naked. He kissed me, and his beard was rough against my face. It was fine. Then he grabbed my hand, and suddenly he reeked of a horrid and torrential want that disgusted me and made me nauseous, even though I knew that I was walking around reeking of the same, just for someone else.
Later, he would keep texting me, and I did not want to figure out the logistics of hooking up with a stranger while living in a glorified dorm. I also found his chin too pointy and his hair too blonde. I left his texts as unread and would forget that I did so, and then I’d see the little red “1” on the top right corner of my messages app, and my heart would leap, thinking that maybe it could have been my ex-boyfriend. I’d open the app and get nauseous again.
My ex-boyfriend called me twice in the month of September, my second month in Sweden. I had a class that started at 9 a.m. — the earliest class I had taken in all of college. He called me as I was getting ready, which meant it was late at night in New Hampshire. “I still love you,” he slurred. He loves me but doesn’t want me. That night, I smoked a joint on the back of our apartment building balcony and screamed into the empty forest.
When we (sort of) got back together at the end of October 2022, I wanted the roles to return to how things were initially. I wanted him to want me more again, and I played as if it were true. It wasn’t, really. I let him say, “I miss you so much. I’ll fly to Stockholm,” and I’d reply by telling him, “Please don’t do that,” secretly wishing that he would, secretly hoping for a grand gesture. I still wanted him so badly, but I had enough pride to know how horrible that was. He probably could have lit me on fire at that point, and all I would do is want want want.
What I regret about my time in Sweden is that it is so colored by this breakup, but these types of things really can’t be helped. In a way, it’s like the bigness of those emotions is contained to a country — a whole continent — that is so far out of my reach, and I feel safer.
I’ve often been envious of people who want so easily. Sometimes I think that if I did, then torrent of my emotions would have somewhere — someone — to go to. I went on a date with a girl in the East Village several months ago now that was perfectly fine — arguably good, even. We talked about where we grew up and what books we were reading. And then the bar closed, so we left and wandered around for a little bit, the air warm but not too suffocating since the sun had set. We parted ways outside of the train, tipsy and rosy-cheeked. I sat down to the familiar sound telling me that “this is an Eighth Avenue-bound L train,” and I just knew that that was not going to work, for no reason except that I just knew.
I’m not really known to half-ass things, and I suppose this is no exception. I either want so badly that I am rubbed raw on the inside, or I do not want at all.
Freshman summer, the man that I had let do whatever was named Aidan, and I liked him very much for two whole weeks. I liked him in some ways because he was the kind of man that I thought I was supposed to like. By this, I do not mean that he was the kind of man that my parents would approve of, but rather that he fit into the performance of the kind of woman (girl?) that I play at. He wore band t-shirts and baggy jeans and had tattoos on his arms with no meaning. He listened to Steve Lacy. He had no active social media, and the only profile that I could find of his was a years-abandoned Facebook, which I had screenshotted to send to Elizabeth and then accidentally sent to him. This is before there was the option to unsend text messages. We went on three dates following that, which is probably a red flag on his part for being remotely interested in me after that.
I realized during the course of those dates that I liked him for his neatly fitting into my performance, and it turned out that he liked me because of the same. I fit into his performance, and I’m not even sure if he realized it.
“You are just so cool,” he said to me over Thai food. I scrunched my nose in confusion. I, personally, thought (think) I was very cool, but he hardly knew me. We’d met a week ago, and the most that he knew about me was what college I went to, what kind of coffee I liked, and the feeling of my tongue down his throat.
When men tell me that they’ve never met anyone like me, I am flattered and then furious. Of course you’ve never met anyone like me, my superiority and individuality complexes would say. But the men who say this are the men who don’t really know me at all, who paint this picture in their head of who I might be to them because I cut my own bangs or because I asked them about their relationship with their mother. The people who know me would never say that they’ve never met anyone like me because they know that that’s not true.
For a long time, I would continue to see people because of the validation that it gave me. Sometimes I was voyeuristic within myself. I’d be turned on because of the fact that I could turn them on. Sometimes I just wanted to be wanted. Sometimes that was enough.
And then it would reach an expiration date when I just knew that I could not continue. When I want so badly, it cannot be hidden, but when I do not want at all, it is equally obvious.
After the last time that I saw Aidan, I got in my car and put my head against the steering wheel. I took deep breaths and let the puffs of air blow back against my face from the horn. Nothing had gone wrong, but I knew when the expiration date had come because I felt a pit in my stomach and an overwhelming feeling of disgust. I felt embarrassed by myself. I was beginning to hate myself.
I put the keys in the ignition, turned the music up loud, and drove home.
