I want too much

“Was it that you wanted too much?”

T asked me this, recently, as Marina was retreating from me, pulling back.

“Well, yes. And no,” I said.

I do want very much. There’s no doubt about that. But I’m afraid that the problem I face isn’t that I want too much, that I want more than someone might be prepared to give.

Rather, my primary problem is the problem I’ve been calling perversion: not wanting too much, but wanting what it is that I want too much.

It’s not that I want more than anyone can provide; it’s that I want what I want more than any person ever can provide perfectly. For me to feel gratified, you have to give me precisely what I want. Not an approximation thereof. Not an asymptotic, aspirational reaching toward it. But it, the thing itself.

I complicate things further by wanting not so much things as feelings. So what I want is to feel alive, not dead; to feel desired, not abandoned; to feel constantly reassured that I am in your mind.

Obviously, you can’t give this to me. No one can. I’m asking for you to alleviate, assuage, remove deep, dark wounds; to apply a constant balm to my lesions; to undo the traumas I’ve suffered.

Obviously, this isn’t fair. The scales are tipped from the start.

It’s not that I want too much. It’s that I want, too much.

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