Invisible Strings

Desires

'What is it you want in a relationship?' My psychologist asks. My brain screeches to a halt, eyes wide. I can hear the hysterical cries in my head of, 'I don't fucking know,' but I try to keep my face calm, and I shift my hips and squeeze the cushion I hold in my lap, drawing my knees up closer to my chest

'To be treated like me,' I sigh. I don't even know if that means anything. 'Fuck, you're dumb at this', my brain yells.

'Maybe it's easier to say what you don't want?' the very emotionally stable woman says to me.

'I suppose,' I shrug. Silence. 'I'm not sure I want to think about this,' I really don't. It hurts to think about. There's an ache in my chest when I think about having a relationship again. An ache of grief, an ache of sadness and an ache of the permanent loss of possibility.

'Do you want to talk about why this is so hard for you to think about and verbalise?' I know she's trying to help me, but today I feel like this topic might actually tip me over the emotional cliff. I knew it was going to be spoken about. I had an event coming up that was all about getting to know other women. Women like me. Lesbian, bi and queer women who had figured out our sexuality much later in life. There could be the potential of meeting someone I was attracted to.

'Attracted to' was as far as I had thought. I wanted to think further, I may have even dipped my toe on the next step of further, but I was afraid it would hurt too much if I thought about a future that I wasn't brave enough to really live. It stuck in my throat when I heard the word 'relationship'.

'I want everything,' I say it with an exhale. I needed the extra breath to carry it out, to support it. The thought, the desire, didn't feel flimsy or weak, it feels truthful. I open my eyes and look at my psychologist with her one raised eyebrow. That must be a helpful tool for her. It saves her speaking, because I know she means for me to explain further. I lean forward, trying to find some boldness and words, that might mean enough to hold the weight of the want I have.

'It's hard to know how to put it into words,' I felt a shiver of anticipation that I was laying out a pattern of some kind, a map I was discovering pieces of, that would give me clues as to where I wanted to go next.

'Say what comes to your mind first,' my brain immediately pounced on a word that made me purse my lips in discomfort. The clever woman opposite me raised her eyebrow again, like she just saw a light turn on and I covered my eyes from the unwelcome brightness.

'Romance,' I sighed with some distaste, because it felt bitter. To want it and to admit that I wanted it.

'Why the look of disgust?' the psychologist asked.

'Because it's frivolous and silly. Isn't it?' In all my years of being in relationships with men, things had felt romantic for a few minutes, maybe. Then it felt like a process to go through. I don't just mean with sex, I mean with everything. Friends of mine described giddy feelings, when seeing their boyfriends or husbands, heart flutters and desperately longing for their male partners to come home. I never felt any of that. I thought 'that's just me, I don't have those feelings'.

'Who says that it is silly to want romance?' she asks.

'It's just not something that lasts, so why want it?' but I can feel a pull in my chest, and I cough to try a shift it. It doesn't move.

'What else do you want?'

The lump feels bigger in my chest, and I lean forward to move it, pushing the cushion in to try and force some kind of softness and comfort on myself.

'You can't say anything wrong. Just what comes to your mind,' the psychologist talks gently, soothingly.

I felt the words coming toward me, soaking through my skin and rushing through my veins with each heartbeat, causing the hairs on my body to ripple attentively. I felt the urgency of them thumping frantic rhythms to signal their escape from my mind.

'I want to be treated as though time is standing still when I'm with someone. As though I'm precious and rare, exciting and unexpected. I want to be kissed like a flower petal feels and then held because I need the closeness to exist. I want to love without being afraid of what I might say or do wrong, love someone like they are the air and water I need to survive but share all we have infinitely. I want to be treated as though I matter. I want to lay down time, like red carpet and experience the glamour and lavishness of stealing hours, just being held and loved'. I stopped to find tears falling down my face.