Watch Out! You Might Just Get What You Want
It's 9:12 AM on a Tuesday, and I'm quietly shivering on my couch. I've been resisting the heat out of some inherited instinct. My mom keeps the AC at seventy-seven in Florida. My dad lives at sixty-nine. The family thermostat reads like a fucked up couple that can't commit.
Lately, I've been thinking about the strange little miracles that show up when I want something with my whole chest. They're always the things that sit right on the fault line between true terror and delight, like finding a way into a study abroad program at the very last minute without knowing a soul (except for my friend Jill…but she was in a different program so it still counts). Or moving to New York on the day I graduated with nothing but a suitcase and a couple of freelance projects I was pretending were a plan. Or the moment I decided to move to LA, because sometimes you have to let your life swerve to see what happens.
But then there's the other kind of wanting. The kind that sends me into a tizzy like the creaky ceiling fan in my yoga class that I'm convinced will finally snap and drop on me the second I surrender into Child's pose. A certain boy whose texts I reread as if they were scripture, even though he couldn't care less. A dream project, I swear, will change my entire trajectory. The way I convince myself is that if this one thing works out, life will line up like a fancy condiments display at a gourmet grocery store on the UWS. And my body always tattles before my brain catches up—the wrong kind of wanting shows up like this weird anxiety that keeps me awake for no reason. Muting someone's texts but checking my phone anyway. Feeling like a bitch around my friends because my entire mood has been hijacked by a desire that isn't even rooted in reality. Not being able to listen to certain songs because they spark that weird feeling in my chest, trickling down into my stomach like a slightly fizzy but otherwise flat soda. It's physiological warfare, and for what?
Earlier this week, I had a complete meltdown about a guy I don't even like. There was a brief time when I thought I liked him, but the crush dissolved months ago. I let it go. I moved on. I even congratulated myself for being so spiritually evolved! Then I found out he got a girlfriend, and suddenly my ego staged a coup. Why not me? Why her?? Why is my brain resurrecting a fantasy I retired last year? It was like being rejected from a job I'd forgotten I'd applied for. My best friend Emily hit me with the line she reserves for moments like this. They aren't meant for you. The universe is protecting you, sis. She says it with the kind of conviction that feels like a cold plunge to the brain. Like… yes, Cait. Obviously.
What really gets me is, the things that were always meant for me never had that tight chest kind of tension. Sure, they needed desire and a touch of delusion and maybe a few spirals at three in the morning, but underneath it all, there was a quiet ease. A click. No deep down losery feeling. No inner critic screaming that I was forcing something that didn't fit. The things that were meant for me unfolded with a smoothness, like some higher power was already three steps ahead, rolling out a rug I didn't know I was walking on.
And as I've gotten older, I've realized that half the time I'm freaking out, I'm following some script I absorbed about how a life is supposed to look. Some rules about timelines, milestones, and what it means to do things the right way. But there is no defined path (screaming this to myself as I write this). What works for someone else won't work for me. It's about leaping while everyone watches from the sidelines, confused, concerned, maybe a little entertained, and doing it anyway. Because the truth is, I've never known what I was doing. I've only ever known when something feels like mine.
Desire is interesting like that. The big stuff always feels like standing at the edge of a diving board, wondering if your bikini will betray you before you hit the water. Yet every time I've jumped, the timing has clicked into place as if something bigger than me was taunting me all along. All these decisions that felt so risky now read like footnotes in a longer story that keeps unfolding exactly as it was supposed to.
And since it's still only nine something in the morning and the shivering has crossed into literal performance art, I might actually do it. The heat, not the high dive. That comes later.
