Just do whatever you like

Look, it's simple—do you want it or not

You want it. You get a chance to have it. Then you spoil it by making yourself feel like you don’t deserve it. You soak in self-resentment until you kinda forget about it (but also not really).

Why do you self-sabotage?

It’s not that you don’t know what you want. You know, and you’re certain of it when you see it. In fact, you quietly look for it when you’re alone. You know the shape of it, the weight of it, the way it would settle in your hands and make you glow if you had it. And that’s the part that scares you the most: it’s not the wanting—it’s the having.

You’re scared of having what you want because that thing, alive and pulsing, would require something of you: honesty. At some point, the thing you want made you so ashamed that you just decided that you’d do everything you can do make sure you never need it again. You can’t lose what you never let yourself reach for. You cover up that wanting with nonchalance because admitting that you can cave to your desires feels weak, yet it’s a totally foolish belief—why do you spite yourself?

The feeling of wanting is the most honest emotion we have. It doesn’t need to be explained. When was the last time you did something just because you wanted to?

I love cats because they’re perfectly selfish.

You’re like a shadow moving through a room, touching everything but claiming nothing. The wanting stays just at the edge of your mind, where you could ignore it if you keep yourself busy enough—fixing things that aren’t broken, picking small things to argue about, cleaning the house when it’s not that dirty. Neuroticism leak. When you’re in denial, there’s always something to do, some way to keep your hands occupied.

You develop a kink for rules, finding a weird joy out of depriving yourself of pleasure then telling yourself that it’s discipline, sacrifice, detachment, or whatever else makes you feel dignified and more righteous than everyone who’s happier than you. You can pretend that you’re fine except for that soft redness of rage bubbling beneath it all—go on, keep lying to yourself and say it’s not even there. Tell me you don’t care.

There are moments when the wanting presses too close, when it feels like it might break you open, and you’d slam it down, tell yourself that wanting is the same as weakness, that freedom is the same as chaos. You half-believe these things, because if they weren’t true, then what was all this for? The years of holding back, holding still, holding everything inside so tightly that sometimes it felt like there wasn’t room to breathe? If you let it all go, what would you even be? Do you know how to be anything else?

You’re scared of happiness, the way it would demand you to become someone else, someone more real and honest. So, you tyrannize happiness. You’re in love with your own suffering—punishment without crime, prejudice multiplied by pride. Your own little personal propaganda centers around how suffering is noble, how succumbing to whimsy is beneath you, without realizing that you’re tied to the habits and fears that you’ve already let shape you. You’re an anorexic of the heart, full of yourself yet still emaciated by self-denial. You’re afraid that if you found happiness—and kept it—everything you once believed to be true would chip away and you’d fall into a wide open crack of having to admit you were wrong.

So you stay where you are, running in circles in the narrow space between wanting and having, where nothing could touch you and nothing could free you. You tell yourself it’s better this way, but even that was a lie, and you know it. You always knew.

But when you’re all alone and you realize you can’t outrun it, you lie in bed and stare at the dark and let every thought rush forward at once into a tangle of… something you can’t quite name. It’s not regret. Regret at least has a shape, a point where it begins and ends. This is different. This is a hundred half-decisions, a thousand split-seconds where you told yourself ‘no’ without even realizing it. Tiny acts of refusal, each one too small to notice until they built up, layer after layer, until you couldn’t remember what it feels like to want freely and to stray for no reason but curiosity or bliss.

So, look, it’s simple—do you want it or not? Just do what you like. Stop stopping yourself. Just do whatever you like.

Can you tell when you’re performing vs. living? Why does it need to make sense to anyone else? Does the thing you say you want really make you happy?

Visual by Lordess Foudre

~

Yours truly,

P.S. Check out my compilation of the best creativity advice on the internet 🦜