The Expiration Date of Desires

Letting go. Moving on. Letting our wants stay.

What I want is subject to change, as by the definition of my soul that is intoxicated by possibility and growth, I too am subject to change. I am a woman who knows herself, only because I allow my knowings to move with me just as winter rhythms into spring. Letting the unknown be a source of inspiration instead of suffering. I don’t make assumptions out of who I am, I sew my own outline based on current truths and past understanding.

The blue lines in a notebook live within me, from my ankles all the way up to the ends of hair that sprout from my scalp. These lines situated in my insides hold the scribbles of my desires. They are written and unwritten. Sentences deleted. Ink blots of uncertainty. The rubbery crumbs of an eraser merging with splatters of metallic charcoal.

These desires never stray too far from me. I carry them all with me. The desires that came to be. The ones I let slip away. The ones that I don’t even know I will one day crave. These desires want to be danced with. I have boundaries with mine. My desires never assume their place in the next season of my life.

These desires don’t want to be dragged onto the dance-floor when their legs are sore and tired. Desires deserve to be brought into conversation first, seduced, romanced, and spent time with. Then, I decide if they come with me into who I am in this moment in time, or if my desires have reached their expiration date.

For desires do not like to be frozen into ice-cubes of stagnancy, they are not there to lie motionless; desires are designed to be danced with. They salsa dance alongside curiosity. Masterfully stepping and turning in tandem. Our desires will drown, unless curiosity comes to breathe life into them.

In my book, Take It In, which I wrote 5 years ago, I wrote that one of my desires was to have children. By the time the book came out, that desire had expired. It expired because a desire is never just a desire. Desires are an embodiment of many truths and untruths. Desires are never to be eaten alone, they must be seasoned with non-attachment, side dishes of fear and courage, cutlery in the shapes of surrender, and most of all, served up on a plate of curiosity.

Emotions and conditioning convinced me that I wanted to have children. In my constant thirst for making meaning of our human existence, this was a page I wasn’t yet ready to tear up. It hadn’t crossed my consciousness. The tenderness, warmth, and all-out adoration that I have for humankind and animals alike, made me assume that my life would include being a mother. In the way that society narrowly defines motherhood as belonging to the narrow box of birthing and nurturing of one’s own children, rather than the life-spreading roots of how we mother ourselves, our communities, and live in harmony with Mother, our Earth. Stewards of all that is.

Having a child would have stayed as a desire, if I didn’t dance with it. As I always say on this very newsletter, a choice is not a choice unless it has been questioned. Even the choices we feel absolutely firm in, they still deserve our interrogation. That’s what I did. That’s what I committed to. An unlearning.

I researched, read books, created space in my arteries to simply feel, and listen to the voice within me that wasn’t the voice of everything outside of me. With more information comes more truth. I didn’t want to have children. It was not a desire that would come with me. When I integrated into that knowing, it felt like a return back to myself, the sudden truth that was there all along and covered up in fog. It was not my path (read more about that, here).

I also owe it to myself, to continue this questioning.

When I met my partner, and through the course of our relationship and multitudes of conversations on this topic, I have trusted in my desire to not want children, and trusted in the foundation of my certainty on this topic. Yet, one has to allow all possibilities to be contemplated and ruminated. It’s how we grow. When we spend time with friends who are parents, I don’t exist in a state of confirmation bias, sniffing out proof of why I shall continue to be child-free. I continue to dance with my desire, and allow curiosity in. I ask myself, “How does this make me feel?”, without trying to force an answer into being. Through it all, I remain resolute in my truth of not wanting children, but I will forever sway softly to the melody of inviting in deeper inquiry.

It is my responsibility to myself, to let desires expire, just as much as it is my responsibility to myself to see how life, people, higher depths of expansive love, fresh off the shelf books, and documentaries move, confirm or shift my desires. It is my responsibility to myself to keep dancing with them all.

When I read old writing, or think about the baby names I wrote in my twenties, shame does not come to antagonise me. I am instead met with the potent confirmation of self-trust. That’s what our desires need the most from us, the self-trust we cultivate that enables us to keep them in motion. Our desires also need us to have the self-trust to extinguish them.

I betray myself when I cling onto desires that masquerade in the shapes of who I am now. I do myself the ultimate disservice if I force and manipulate desires into being, that no longer benefit me. I refuse to be tethered to desires that were based on shoulds instead of truth. I am unwilling to birth desires that were tantalising in the creative process of the womb, yet do not need to be executed beyond that.

Right now, all of my desires, past, present, and future, are being audited. I am sitting with each and every one of them. Letting them speak. Kissing their shadows and sore spots. The desires that still want to be heard but fear has silenced them. The ones who will continue in a liminal space of uncertainty until life decides what will become of them. No shoulds are allowed in this audit. No voices of people saying what they think I should do. Releasing pressure. Releasing it all. Dancing with my desires.

Some desires have an expiration date. They ask us to grieve them. There might be some that choose to live on with us. The desires that penetrate our ever-changing growth and life experiences. The desires so faithful to us, that they are us. They stay and remain. But, we will never know if those desires are our destiny until we sit those desires down and ask:

Desire, how shall we dance together today?

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Tomorrow is my Substack anniversary, friends. One whole year of Be Difficult, Darling! I don’t do traditional milestones, but I damn well do milestones like this, so I shall be making myself a cake and celebrating!

I sit in pride as I write these words, honouring my consistency and devotion to this self-carved space here on the internet. I am grateful for growing this little nest of ideas and musings by 160% over the past 365 days. Thank you for your support, comments, shares, and emails. Thank you for reading my words, and thank you for the financial gifts of gratitude for valuing all that I pour into this space. And, please do drop me a note about what you enjoy about this newsletter, I’d love to hear!
In joy, Gigi x