More from Want

I continue to be pleasantly surprised and oddly comforted by the vulnerability of so many of the submissions to Want.

Stories Can Save Us

 

I didn't have stories to help me survive when I was growing up, but (thankfully), since my mid-20s I have and I am eternally grateful to them and hopeful they will still be here in the future, even if the worse happens next week.

 …And it sucks. I also don’t think I am ugly at all, so I don’t understand why I can’t find a woman who would like to be with me. I don’t think I have ever been loved by a woman, or by any romantic interest, as a matter of fact. It hurts. Sometimes my heart aches because of that silent rejection. Somehow, I feel lonely thinking about the fact that I can’t find a female match on Tinder or Bumble, or in real life. It used to be easy on apps, for me. But now, it doesn’t work. I sometimes feel I am in the wrong place and maybe also the wrong time.--From Want

I finally got a copy of Want and am so excited to discover that women who think and feel like I do have contributed to the collection. I know I will never meet them, but it still just feels good. I never imagined before I opened the book that I would relate to so many of the words inside it.

My cat sauntered around the kitchen corner earlier tonight and had a mouse wiggling in his mouth and I screamed and he dropped the mouse and now I don’t know where the mouse is.

Mouser that he is, my cat is on extra intense patrol right now. I already felt queasy before this happened and I am just feeling worse because I hate knowing there’s a mouse here and I don’t know where they are.

Rationally, I shouldn’t be afraid of a mouse, right?

Why am I so nervous that there’s a mouse in my house? 

I think it’s the way they move; it’s so weird how quickly and unpredictably they move 

And then there are the germs 

Otherwise, though, they’re kind of cute 

Updated

This article makes me think I wasn’t imagining the feelings behind what I first wrote:

https://www.leefang.com/p/democratic-consultants-deceived-donors

I have donated to Kamala Harris‘s campaign more than a couple of times, but I am at the point where I just can’t afford to anymore.

As much as I want her to win, as much as I need her to win, I resent the wording of the emails and texts I receive each time a further donation request is made. 

Most people can’t afford to donate more than a few times and even then only $20 or $30 each donation, if that.

I don’t begin to understand how campaign finance works, but it just feels like candidates are not reading the room. 

The average American does not have endless pockets, no matter which side they want to donate to for the presidential election.

I just don't understand how we are where we are, right now, in our country. How did someone like Trump get here, not once, twice, but three times? A candidate for presidency, yet again.

I fear, to a nauseating level, that he is going to win. I am almost positive he will. And with that win comes Vance (even worse than Trump, if possible) and Project 2025.

What will happen to so many of my friends and me, so many other people all across the country, who are "The Other," who don't support Trump and are parts of marginalized communities? 

I also fear for the field I work in: libraries.

I fear for nurses and doctors and any one else in the medical profession who 100 percent support women in all areas of their health.

My mental list of fears has grown so strong in the past few months that I am never relaxed (and I pretty much came out of the womb a very un-relaxed being.)

I find myself wondering what the parameters will be to quality as a "enemy from within." Will the military be used to oppose anyone who dares to object to what could possibly become a dictatorship?

When I get like this, I lose all sense of how to write down my thoughts and feelings. On paper and even more in my own mind, I sound almost unhinged. And that scares me too.

If I could talk directly with Donald Trump and know he'd really listen I would ask him so many things:

-Why are you so hateful and nasty and racist and sexist and overall just bastardly? It doesn't matter how industrious or how hard you may have worked to get where you are, it should not come at the cost of your humanity or ours.

-How can you say you will be a woman's "protector" (never mind how cringey that sounds) and yet be so horrible to them?

-How can you have once said you were the most lgbtq-friendly president and yet want to take so many of their rights away...possibly do even worse than that to them?

-How can you take any disagreement whatsover (no matter how small or real or sincere) and turn it into vengeance and punishment for those who do not see things the same way you do? 

-How insecure can you be that you want to go after your critics and people who do not vote for you or who support Kamala Harris? Does that mean you're going to try and go after more than half the country's population?

-Have you ever you truly felt empathy or sorrow for someone else's plight?

-What the H-LL were you thinking choosing JD Vance as your running mate? He's even scarier than you are!

My list could go on and on, but I'll stop here, except to say that the most honest thing you have ever said was back in 2016 when you stated: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

I fear so much for our future and for all that you will bring to it if you win in November.

 

I think this October Atlantic cover pretty much says it all...not to mention, I'm too exhausted, emotionally and mentally, to even contemplate a future with Project 2025 and a man not shy at all about his dictatorship dreams. But as horribly uncouth and downright bastardly as Trump is, his running mate, with nightmarish dreams of his own, scares me far, far more.

Recently I had a dream where Zachary Levi explained to me in excruciating detail why men don’t like me.

It hurt, but it didn’t hurt, because ZL is not someone I’ve ever cared for…even so, that doesn’t change the truth and despite it being a dream it has excavated some very old pain. 

My dream life is often much more vivid than my real life and, in this case, the words in them are not made up, but memories of what other boys said in my youth.

My whole life, from third grade on, I have been hyper aware of my distinct lack of appeal to anyone who didn’t have to like me.

Women and men equally don’t like me, but it hurts more with men because society places so much worth on women’s worth to men and the older I get the more I know I’ve failed at life.

From the time I was 12, my mom always pushed me to be normal. In restaurants she’d verbally nudge me to talk to waiters and it only got worse as I got older. 

My lack of interest in men seemed to both insult and infuriate her, even before I tried to come out. In her eyes I just wasn’t trying hard enough and if I did I’d “get one.”

She didn’t believe in my ugliness like I did because she believed it was only a matter of my tweaking things. Her anger wasn’t with my looks, but with my indifference, my lack of engaging in the efforts to have a boyfriend.

For more than 40 years I have never doubted my attraction to women, even if I  didn't understand it or welcome it in the beginning and still don't to some extent. To this day, I find my strongest emotional and romantic and (this said with much reluctance and even some shame) physical pull to women.

But because I have recently found myself a tad flustered around this guy I know, I have to wonder if maybe I should consider myself queer (a word that doesn't sit well on my mouth since I grew up with it being considered a slur) instead of a lesbian.