Ill With Want

You can't *really* know what it is to *want* things until you're *at least* 30. And then with each passing year, it gets bigger... because the *want* is more, and the *possibility* is less. Like how each passing year of your life seems faster because it's a smaller portion of your total life. Like that. But in reverse. Everything becomes pure want."
                                                                                 -Mistress America

Respectfully, I disagree I believe you can know the want before you're 30. You can know it from your beginning.You can recognize early that want. The echo of time grows in your ears as it progresses but from the start it's there as a whisper. "You don't have time. You don't have time."

I have moved nearly every year of the past 10 years. I moved to Mobile to go to boarding school. I moved to Birmingham to go to college. I moved to Chattanooga for a job. I exchanged apartments every one of the years I inhabited those cities because my current apartment was good, but maybe another one was better? An opportunity for improvement? I must try!

And now I have bought a house. Now I make one more move into the house, and, presumably, I don't move anymore. I have a mortgage to be responsible for so, presumably, I don't change jobs. Or at least I maintain employment similar to that which supports my mortgage, likely to be similarly lacking and rewarding. 

I do not quit my job and head to Nashville or Knoxville or Hawaii to get a degree in pharmacy. I do not apply for Doctoral programs in Germany or Finland where my education will be supported and funded. I do not decide abandon and forsake everything I own as I have done before because now I have a place. A (semi-)permanent place in the universe that is mine. 

But just because I do not do those things, the want doesn't leave. The happiness I hold for a place that is mine is tinted with those other wants. "But I do want to go to pharmacy school.", "I do want to study medicinal chemistry.", I do want to give up everything I own and travel to Spain or Germany to work as a bartender or tour guide." I want to be free to remake my world in a fashion entirely different and strange from what I have now. With so many possibilities and so many lives to live, how can we be satisfied knowing we'll only have the one? Knowing in order to maintain independence and be able to travel at my leisure, I can't be enrolled in time demanding schooling. Knowing that to start up nuclear plants, I can't be a bartender staying out until 5 am. Knowing that one day, if I want to be a mother, I can't do whatever I want whenever I like. 

Knowing that for all my happiness, maybe something out there is better. And then , "Everything becomes pure want." 

How do you resolve the want when you get to choose only one?


I am sick with wanting
And it's evil how it's got me
And everyday is worse than the one before
The more I have the more I think,
I'm almost where I need to be
If only I could get a little more
I need for something
Now let me break it down again
I need for something
But not more medicine
Something has me (Something has me)
Oh something has me (Something has me)
Acting like someone I don't wanna be
Something has me (Something has me)
Oh something has me (Something has me)
Acting like someone I know isn't me
Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed
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