This Time I’m Going After What I Want, Not What People Expect Me To

For the past few weeks, I’ve had lyrics from a song by The Smiths running through my head: Please, please, please let me get what I want this time. And each time I’ve noticed it, I’ve record-scratch stopped myself and thought, “That’s ridiculous. You’ve gotten almost everything you’ve ever wanted. Stop being so dramatic.”

But I woke up this morning with a new realization. It’s not that I haven’t gotten what I’ve set out to get. It’s that I’ve never truly set out independently, with the primary intention of getting what I want.

But how easy it’s been for things to masquerade as what I want! Things other people wanted. Things that seemed like the right thing to do. Things that seemed like the next logical or necessary step. Things I hoped I’d learn to want if I kept doing them. Things I thought I should want.

And what’s more, how easy it’s been for self-sufficiency to masquerade as independence. I’ve taken care of myself. Rarely asked for help. Made all the decisions. Been the manager, organizer, and driver of almost every relationship and situation I’ve participated in.

And while I knew that playing those roles effectively made me a rock in a vast ocean of uncertainty that the people around me could (sometimes desperately) cling to, it never occurred to me that playing that role also made me… a rock. Without the ability to float freely. Not only anchoring the people around me, but myself too.

Anchoring myself to a specific idea of who I needed to be. To other people’s expectations. To the role I thought I had to play. To decisions I had outgrown. To what everyone else wanted or needed, not as a martyr, but because I thought it gave me worth. I thought it was my value to the world—to stay in one place, ever the same, a constant amid the crashing waves.

But what if I don’t want to be a rock? What if I want to be a buoy, floating freely at times and loosely tethering myself at others. Without anyone holding onto me for stability and thereby pushing me below the surface. With the understanding that each time I move, it will change the landscape, and wholeheartedly believing that it’s okay for me to do so. Or at least believing it half-heartedly to start.

What if the entity I’m begging to please let me get what I want is not the universe or fate or luck or determinism. What if it’s me?

Allix—please, please, please get what you want this time. Without worrying whether it fits into a narrative of yourself that you never intended to write. Without needing everyone around you to understand why you want it. Without pushing it to the bottom of the list beneath what other people want, what you should do, what you have to do, and what is reasonable or realistic to want.

Lord knows, it would be the first time.