What You Want Wants You

How many of us are brave enough to follow desire?

I just returned from a trip with my son. He and I visited the college campus he will be attending in the fall (actually, next month!) It was a two-day new student orientation, but we squeezed two extra days onto the trip. And I was re-oriented with my son. This kid who continues to surprise me, entice me and impress me. I really listened to lyrics from the music he likes. I really listened to his opinion on these political times. So often, the mom in me forgets things. I forget that "the first duty of love is to listen.”¹ Our voices get lost in the day-to-day shuffle through life. I felt like he and I were able to press pause. I didn’t realize how much the pause would pull at me.

This 18th summer I am returning to what matters most. The essay I plucked for a redux feels like a perfect match for my right now. Because right now I am having conversations with my kid about desire. About being true to yourself when so many outside voices will tell you what you should do and don’t do, what you should study, what will earn you the most praise, pay, clout. Without saying it or naming it, what my kid and I rolled around in those few days away was faith. How to stay tethered when teetering on a threshold.

My favorite moment of the entire trip was an impromptu visit to the chapel on campus. We were the only two in there. Quietly, we each took a turn kneeling and praying. This was the moment - the moment he and I both listened to something greater than ourselves.

I hope my son knows that what he wants these next four years, wants him.

Here, please enjoy an essay from January of 2024. About desire.

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In going back to My Alphabet Atlas the word I picked to write about this week is desire. And wouldn’t you know it, as I was gathering my thoughts about how I want to write through the idea of desire, I received the latest helping from

Jeannine Ouellette

’s Story Challenge offered in her Writing in the Dark subscription. The part of her offering this week that stood out to me the most (and slowed down my breathing and frenetic thoughts) was,

We could speak all day and night about desire, because most of us have gone to—go to—such great lengths to protect ourselves from the fullness of its sensation (and are so good at deceiving ourselves about the nature of our truest desires). This distancing and deceit impedes our art, without question. In art, the closer we get to ourselves, the better. In art, the more we feel, the better. In art, the truth of our desires is our guiding star.

Yes, yes and yes. I read this at the exact time I needed to. This seems to happen to me lately - the universe places my eyes on the exact thing that will expand my heart. The truth of our desires is our guiding star.

My response that I posted to the Week Five write your desire prompt:

I want time to stop bossing me around. I want empty hours in my day with a side of inbox zero. I want one more day with my dad. I want one more day with my dad as a young girl and the jukebox by our side. I want to redo the time spent at his bedside vigil and say all the things that were stuck in my throat. I want my mom to stop aging. I want my face to stop reminding me of my age. I want my teenage son to look up from his phone. I want my son to know how fast aging goes. How quickly parents fade. I want to go back to the days none of us had phones. I want to dial in to clouds, stars and drifting thoughts. I want there to be the right time to let all the tears fall without wiping them away. I want time to dream. I want time to cascade slowly like the falling tide. I want to lust for lust again. I want my marriage to feel youthful again. I want time for time to heal.

Time. That is what is at the top of my list of wants. I want more time. Over the recent break between Christmas and New Years, my husband and I both came down with Covid. Somehow our kids escaped it. The week with no school, both kids home the whole time and we get sick (figures). We had to take precautions to distance ourselves, wear masks in the home and not hug our kids. Only three years post-pandemic and I already slipped back into taking those hugs for granted. New Years Eve, the ball dropped, and I couldn’t hug my 10-year-old who was so excited to see midnight. Once I was in the clear, my daughter slipped back into my arms so fast it made my heart skip a beat. I held her for as long as she needed. I was not going to be the one to break up the hug. Afterwards, I grew disappointed in myself for forgetting so easily how lucky we are to embrace one another and for forgetting so easily how so recent it was that we couldn’t do that with loved ones.

Sharing a hug with my daughter last summer

In response to my post, Jeannine pointed me towards a poem I had never read titled A Little Tooth by Thomas Lux.

Thomas Lux

1946 –2017

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone.  It's all

over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail.  And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing.  You did, you loved, your feet
are sore.  It's dusk.  Your daughter's tall.

Time. It slips away from us and how easily we forget that it can.

All of the talk about desire and thoughts of time passing makes me think about how at the start of the year we are inundated with voices declaring resolutions, intentions, goals. All the wants for the year. I have zero judgment with these declarations. I love a bright, shiny new year and a fresh start as much as the next girl. I’m just here today wondering - what if I (you/we) approach it differently this year? What if I practice listening to the wants right in front of me today? Or just this month. Or this season? What if we collectively dig even deeper than the typical goals that pop up around fitness, diet, finances and productivity. What if we slow ourselves down enough to listen to our true wants? The ones that we distract ourselves from following. The ones we distract ourselves from even feeling because of all the doing we do.

What if changing the way I show up to my desire shifts things so that my wanting turns into having?

Midway through 2023 I read a book titled, What You Want Wants You by Suzanne Eder. I heard of it by way of Martha Beck’s book, The Way of Integrity. You can find more on the book here. My thoughts keep returning to this idea, over and over. What you want wants you. I actually put that down as part of my “About” page here on Substack. “Slowing down with intention, honoring what I want, recognizing maybe it wants me.” I play with this over and over again.

When I listen internally, my voice beckons me to slow down. I’m in a stage of my life where in order to maximize myself I need to minimize everything else.

So I am going to expand more on the prompt

Jeannine Ouellette

planted. Because I want my wants to grow.

I want to believe the saying, wasting time is not time wasted. I want to recycle all the energy I ever gave alcohol and pour it into my kids’ hearts. I want my kids to know nothing can reduce my love for them. I want to convert my words into motion because passion is a product of action. I want fear to stop being the protagonist of my brain’s stories. I want my brain to stop narrating. I want my body to grab the microphone and speak up. I want to unwrap myself from expectations. The self-inflicted ones. The expectation that I can master time, the day in front of me. I want to drop the compulsion to hack and stack my day, trying to get it all done. I want to drop things. I want to leave things incomplete. And not have resulting angst when I do.  I want time to afford extras. Extra emptiness, extra allowance to just be, extra spontaneity. I want time to return to me. I want ROI on my time spent. I want to breathe more and deeper. I want deeper thoughts and less productivity. I want input, not output. I want to pour into me more, less into others. I want my imperfections to create connections.

I don’t believe I am alone. I don’t think my wants are unique. 

Thank you for being here. I want you to know I so appreciate you. I would love for you to comment below with your wants. What are you hoping for right now? This season? This weekend?

If something spoke to you here, would you consider sharing it or passing it on? This weekly letter is my new labor of love. Your word of recommendation helps grow my reader community and helps expand my heart.

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xoxoxo

~Allison

If you're a writer on Substack and have been enjoying my work, please consider recommending DARE TO BE to your readers for essays from a sober focused woman and mom who is waking up to life here in mid-life, daring to speak up as a woman in recovery who is writing about recovery of self, turning down the noise of the world, reclaiming desire and walking into each day with intentional living.

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1. This quote is attributed to theologian Paul Tillich