i'm not "expanded." i am a lover girl.
imagining a new world for myself where the two are connected, not at war.
It’s Friday night at Mexico Lindo. My uncle is leaning forward, his voice piercing the tequila-induced clamor around us. He is telling me what my son needs, which is what he wished he had and what he made sure to give his own son: discipline. The influence of a masculine presence. Structure and a respect for authority.
Yes, he and I are both three-quarters through fishbowl margaritas. Yes, my son is eyeing the time clock and mouthing to me, “Am I still going to watch Naruto tonight?” Yes, my mom is tensing at the boys-need-discipline spiel rooted in the traditional family structures that my Uncle is vocally passionate about.
But I am listening. Because, at that moment, I am open.
Does this Uncle know? Probably. Does he know me? In some ways, and in many ways, no.
Strangely, therein lies my freedom—I don’t have to explain. He, like my son, is quintessentially Aquarian in his fixed-sign-ness. But I am not threatened.
I am comfortably wavy as we climb into the car. We drop off my Uncle and he leaves me with an offer: to no longer be a Mexico-Lindo-twice-a-year Uncle, but a throw-the-football-around kind of Uncle. The first offer I have ever received from any male figure in my life, outside of my brother’s natural and genuine interest in Max. (My brother, whom I think the world of.)
Will I take it? I don’t know. But it was made, and that is not lost on me.
“You’re an amazing mom. It’s what your dad would’ve done for me,” he leaves me with before he heads into his home, carrying my Auntie’s takeout. I have not been to this house as often as others, and yet it is a landmark, a homing beacon for some of my softest childhood memories.
My sleep is restless, and I am too hazed at the edges to distill the night into wisdom. I fall asleep on the couch, next to Max, to the sound of Naruto.
The next morning, my mom springs up in front of me with her arms open: “Can I tell you how proud I am of you?” I know what she is about to say.
“You just don’t need any of what he is saying. You’re so above that old way of thinking, of wanting or needing a man. You’re on another level. You’re just too expanded for any of that.”
She is looking directly at me, her eyes brimming with tears, but I know this isn’t just about me. We’ve been through this before.
“He doesn’t know anything about you,” she ends. I sigh and try to think of another way, of a million different attempts, to say gently but firmly: “Yes, and in some ways, neither do you.”
This is the advent of thinking as ME.
Not as a single mother.
Not as the right-hand daughter of a widowed mom, or the first child of a dad who died.
Not as a new solopreneur or a writer trying to launch something.
In that moment, I am untethered from whatever the fuck I am supposed to be. I am soaring between the raindrops, hitting the roof, above the blankets of rainclouds, and into the belly of God, the Universe. The very birthplace of desires.
I am finally awake. I want things as me, and I want them, and I want them.
Lately, all I can think of is what I don’t know and what I want to know. Yet, for the first time in my life, it’s not from hypervigilance. I’m hungry and desiring, and there are so many things I want to taste.
When you finally trust yourself and your inner world, the unknown is no longer a threat. Wanting is no longer weakness; it is pure invitation and creativity.
I’ve seen and known many strong women who became both faces of the coin: the mom and the dad. And I respect them for it, truly. I have a special place in my heart for single moms because I am one. I’ve watched my own mother, my cousins, old coworkers—it truly is devotion in one of its most powerful forms.
Still, this isn’t an argument of superiority between gender-roles or capacities, or even who has the right or the capacity to wield feminine or masculine energies.
All I can say are these three things:
1) I don’t want to be a dad. I don’t want to be a man.
2) I am allowed to want, as myself, not from the worry of what others think of me.
3) I would love someone to hold the world with me.
How and where they intersect is something I’m still navigating. Yet this isn’t going to be a discussion on mother-father roles. Maybe I’ve misled you!
This is a discussion on what it means to WANT from your deepest self.
Surprise: i’m a lover girl
Strong women don’t want. Strong women don’t need men. Strong women will be fine. Strong women don’t need your pity. — a motto from my childhood
I do find it funny how a “Boys will be men,” type conversation with my Uncle would feel like a flashlight on one of the biggest, truest admissions of my life:
I want to have a partner, and I want to be a partner. I want to build something with someone. Because, I am not just a mom or a single mom.
In other words: I am a lover girl. Always have been, always will be.
I also have no problem admitting that I am not a man or a father, nor do I believe that living my life as such will necessarily produce a defect in my son. Yet, my truth remains this:
I believe it could be really, really, really nice. And so long as it is really, really nice, then I really, really want it.
Nothing is more revelatory than what you truly want and what you are too afraid to want. When we’re too embarrassed or too bogged down by “what it means” to desire freely, we will accept (and attract) crumbs, ghosts, or the last-chance-basket versions of our desires:
Friends who use us as placeholders, audiences, or sounding boards.
Jobs that look great on paper, but slowly, steadily drain us of our passion and life force.
Generationally-inherited dynamics that suffocate or obligate us.
Partners who check the “Yay, I’m not single anymore!” box but are actually quite terrible for us.
Our desires are embedded with pieces of ourselves… and why wouldn’t they be?
Yet, in our very human way of doing things, we complicate desire. We contort our wanting to defend ourselves from what the world will say. In other words, we turn a holy act into vigilance and defense.
Standing in that kitchen, I was reminded of something that has always loomed over me: the idea that girls who want love are weak. It was never uttered verbatim, but it was constantly present across my life—a watchful specter, looming in every corner.
One of the worst corporal punishments I ever received in my life was because I got caught AIM-ing a cute skater-punk who wanted to be my boyfriend.
Later—my mom shaking her head at the girls waiting on the bleachers for their boyfriends after school. “What kind of mother lets her daughter do that?” she’d say as we watched my friend take her boyfriend’s books from him, freeing his arm so he could use his crutches properly.
Another time: an older boy asks me to skate with him at Ice Palace. I was too scared to text him back, but still, I received the ice and silence for two days. As if I should’ve known better than to attract it.
So after that, I would exorcise all of my wants and dreams of love. I would conduct my desires furtively before killing them. I would remind myself that it was weak to want. I’d never ask for anything—only take whatever drifted my way.
In short, I ended up dating a lot of losers. Guys who’d smoke all of my weed, leave me behind at bars with the tab, and become pointedly mean when I got into a better college than he did. And finally, my son’s father. I’d pursue him, pretending it was in the name of justice. In reality, my trapped, suffocated desire was tearing my heart to shreds, and I had no idea what to do.
But I couldn’t say that.
Instead, I’d perform impressive feats of logic-contortion to prove to the world I was too solid, too smart to be heartbroken. And, in some twisted logic, it was still “better” than being a girl who wanted things, especially love.
And even though I was too strong to want, there was always disappointment.
“You can do so much better than him. You really don’t know how great you are,” from the very people who warned me about girls who wanted.
“You could have anything, anyone you wanted.”
Ha! As if I had a single ounce of freedom to even fathom what that could be.
If being “expanded” means being too strong to want to be in love, then I don’t want it. — me to everything I was taught.
How to desire like the moon
People say that the bodies of nature—the moon, the Sun, the stars—don’t experience desire, as if they are lifeless beings. They experience attraction by the laws of physics. They dance within gravities, entangle themselves in orbits, and yet, we discount them as mechanical functions. Maybe that’s because we silly humans put so much judgment, friction, and assessment on our own attractions and wants.
I look back at what I was conditioned to believe (through words and action), and I realize I am the meeting of two elements:
the relentless fury and fire consuming all of the shame, regret…
and the buoyant grace of a still, receiving ocean.
It is not easy to want. I feel and dream for all those who may understand what I am feeling. And in many ways, I do see the shelter resting within, “I’m too strong to want.”
Wanting, in the holiest, purest way, is an act of love, of faith. You are putting yourself on the line for failure, for criticism, for projection, for heartbreak. You are placing the softest part of yourself into the hands of the unknown.
No wonder people (myself, especially) are so afraid to want with every ounce of their being!
To release expectations, inhibitions, and the, “What will they think of me?” is to reach out for the blessing of your past and future selves. It is the only real way to say, “I’m late but better than never.”
That’s a pretty tall order, right?
But even the wildest dreams begin as a whisper, an exhaustion of shrinking, and a, “You know what, FUCK IT, I’m going to do it,” muttered beneath your breath, eyes shut, as you jump off the edge of what you know.
So here I am, emulating the Moon and the Sun:
𖦹 I am a lover girl. I love to love, to be in love, to make, give, and receive love.
𖦹 I live not to “get” or to achieve but to create. I do all things with every ounce of my Soul.
𖦹 I want to build something with a good man (not a perfect man), but someone who is just like me and not like me at all.
𖦹 I can be strong and also want to be held. That is not a contradiction—it is my depth.
𖦹 I’m not afraid to want what I don’t have. Not having is not a deficiency; it is a fact. And what I want for my son and me, I want as I would want a gift.
So, there it is. My heart is on the altar.