DESIRE HELD MY HAND
Written by Chloe Sim. Images by Ian Dooley via Unsplash.
The human condition is blighted by the fact that it is a constant balancing act — of will, emotion, desire. I have gone through much of my life breezily, without much concern or care. I was very happy to go with the flow and let life lead me as it pleased. Desire to me was something I rarely paid attention to, a foreign concept — something all at once tangible and intangible, something so real and yet so out of reach.
As the product of divorced parents, my own idea of a family unit has been somewhat warped. As a child I was afraid I would not know how to love. I did not know what love meant, and that was scary to me. I thought that fear and desire came hand in hand, a 2-for-1 package deal — that you needed one to feel the other. To me, desire was always a fine balance between loss and gain, the art of understanding what is worth sacrificing. It was also about control; I never felt like I could give into that primal part of myself that screamed so desperately for something other than the life I had to live.
Then, a couple of years ago, I was in a relationship that could only be described as unhealthy. It was sheer stubbornness that compelled me to stay where I was comfortable for as long as I did, and to settle. You would think human survival instincts would propel me far away from the sheer misery this would lead me to experience, but I stayed, and felt stuck; because taking risks meant losing control, and I was unwilling to give that up. This relationship pulled me apart, unravelled me at the seams — and when I finally came out of it, my only option was to put myself together again.
I moved to Japan for a few months, living with a couple of host families for some of my stay there. In both households, the fathers of the families were mostly absent — one choosing to live more centrally in the city during the work week, the other leaving early in the morning and coming home at around 9 at night. While this was what worked for these families, I initially found it difficult to accept. But in many ways, Japan ended up becoming the cathartic experience I never knew I needed. It allowed me to figure out that I didn’t just have to be a pawn in a game. It felt good. Amidst the days spent sipping expensive coffees, and the nights spent in various bars and clubs, I finally gave in to desire.
Desire became real to me then. I knew I could never settle for anyone again or put myself through another horrible relationship. I knew I could never be satisfied as a part of an unhappy partnership, or an uncommunicative one. I discovered that most of my fears really had no substance to them – they merely vanished like vapour into thin air the instant I decided to chase desire.
It started out as a slow, deep burn that I couldn’t put into words. It was raw, and new. In the whirlwind of exploring a new country, it felt magical. It took a lot of brokenness, a fear of failure, and time spent in the monotony of a Japanese suburb for desire to finally become a friend. And what a wonderful friend it is — the kind that takes you to a good party then holds your hair back when you’re throwing up in a toilet bowl. Desire feels like a sigh of relief, something to grasp onto like a buoy in the ocean, keeping you from drowning. It is a driving force that keeps on going.
Desire held my hand and told me I was better than the boxes I had confined myself to, and led me to the places my stubbornness had held me back from. I became enamoured with the freedom it gave me. The freedom to think beyond my current life, my past life, my mistakes; to really think about what I could do with myself and to build a better future. For me this involved moving to a different country and being forced to reshape my identity — suddenly I was a blank slate, and I could be whoever I wanted to be, whatever I desired. I was no longer just the product of a broken home, an angsty teenager, or the stressed out student because I knew how to be better than that. I could unashamedly chase the life I wanted to live, because the only person I was living for… was me. Desire lets you be a bit selfish, and it’s wonderful.
I had grown sick of feeling like a car with a sputtering engine — I just wanted to get on with life, so I did. It was scary, but Desire said, “Screw scary.” I think sometimes it takes being scared and lonely and maybe a bit stuck, before you can begin to fathom building bigger and better things. It takes feeling lost, stumbling into dark alleys and dead ends before you find yourself thrust from darkness into light. It’s like falling in love — starting slowly, and then happening all at once.
I’m still trying to figure out how to love, and to overcome the things that scared me. I am sometimes still a scared little girl trying to navigate this crazy world, but navigating is easier when you have a destination to get to, and things to guide you along the way. Desire also said, “Screw failure,” so I’ve started saying yes to all the opportunities that come my way.
So this is my invitation to you, to start saying yes, to accept that life comes with scary bits, to let desire into your life, and let it bring you to the places you don’t expect it to. For me, that means slowly building a life I don’t feel the need to escape from and to feel comfortable and confident in my own skin. This is for the person that stopped believing in love, stopped setting goals & forgot how to dream. This is for all the people that are scared and maybe a little lost — a reminder that it doesn’t last, nothing does, and life is too short to live in fear.
