What I want

And I want to drink eight glasses of water a day.

I want to grow my own organic vegetables and have all the right political opinions. The kind that make people look at me with squinty eyes. I want to shun reality television and watch only foreign films. I want to be able to walk by the Gap and wrinkle my nose and think ‘no thanks’ while I make my way over to shops with names like “Milk.”

I want authenticity, honesty, just the right combination of naivety, cynicism, optimism, and hope. I want to read the New Yorker, Colours and Harpers without feeling proud of myself.

I want to stay up late drinking red wine with a man who wears square glasses and chain smokes and doesn’t own a hairbrush and doesn’t have a real job and will talk to me about the book he’s been writing for twelve years without checking my watch and counting the hours of sleep I’ll get before I have to be at work.

I want to stop making excuses.

I want to stop wanting.

I want to write terrible poetry and think it’s great. I want to be funny. I want to be thought-provoking. I want to own a pair of dancing shoes and use them. I want someone to fall madly, sadly and desperately in love with me. I want to keep someone awake at night. I want to break someone’s heart. Except I don’t.

I want to not to care what others think. I want to be a raging bitch. I want to stop saying I’m sorry. I want to stop feeling sorry. I want to tell her I hate her, I want to tell him I think he positively sucks. And then hug them both so hard I can feel their heartbeats. I want to be ten again with scraped knees and red, messy wild hair. And a flat stomach and not know what it means to have a flat stomach.

I want to stop changing my mind.

I want validation and not want to want it. I want to move away and I want to stay right where I am. I want the answers. I want to feel ok with not having any of the answers. I want not to be afraid of being on my own, I want to not be afraid of being me. I want to stop feeling ridiculous.

I want to want to eat tofu.

I want to tell my high school boyfriend I miss him. I want to be sixteen again and drunk on screw-top wine and convinced I’m going to be great.

I want to cry. I want to stop crying. I want to finish the book I’ve been reading for three weeks. I want it to stop being hard. I want to live in a basement apartment and listen to Sarah Harmer’s ‘Basement Apartment’ and not feel the irony. I want someone to bring me home strawberries and not the Californian kind.

I want my head to stop hurting, I want all of this wanting to stop eating up my energy at a furious rate. I want to refuel on M&M’s.

I want to throw out my vacuum and not care about antibacterial soap, anti-aging cream, birth control and antioxidants. I want not to know that one day I will be forty, with two kids and a dog I am indifferent to and will laugh at my twenty-five-year-old ramblings and indulgences. I want to dust by pursing my lips and blowing and not care.

I want to stop instinctively smiling at babies and wanting to cuddle them. I want to wear clothes that make me look fat and not care about split ends. I want to be a bad friend, and know my friends will love me anyways.

I want to fall into a deep, lovely sleep and wake up laughing.