The Death of Desire

There is a moment in every love story that I have always been afraid of. It is not the confession, or the kiss, or the part where two people finally decide that they are going to stay. It is the moment after all of that, when you realise you are no longer waiting for it. You have spent years imagining someone coming into your life and changing everything, and then one evening you are sitting across from them, listening to them say all the things you once begged the universe to hear, and all you can think is, where were you when I still wanted this?

I think about that more than I should. I think about how easily desire can turn against you. You want something for so long that wanting becomes a habit, and then one day the thing is in front of you and you cannot understand why your heart is so quiet. It is the exact moment where you just sit there and realise that the person you spent years becoming ready for is speaking to a version of you that no longer exists.

Maybe this is what happens when you spend too much time being disappointed. You begin by asking for very little. A reply. Some effort. A little honesty. Someone who remembers what you told them yesterday. Someone who does not make you feel ridiculous for wanting to know where you stand. Then even those things start feeling like too much to ask, so you stop asking.

You learn to swallow the message you wanted to send. You leave the conversation unfinished. You stop checking your phone. You tell yourself that you were never waiting anyway. After a while, you become convincing at it. You can sit beside someone you desperately want and pretend you would be perfectly fine if they walked away.

And maybe that is where love begins to die. Like when you start preparing yourself for their absence while they are still there.

One of my subscribers, Sarah, wrote something that made me think about this in a different way. She wrote about being a hopeless romantic and how exhausting it is to carry that kind of heart into a world that keeps rewarding people for caring less. She wrote about the love we have been promised by films and books, the love where someone notices everything, where effort comes without being requested, where you do not have to wonder whether the other person actually wants you.

SARAH’S ESSAY:

Perhaps the ideal way to confess is on a rainy afternoon in Stourhead Gardens, like Mr. Darcy in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, or a silent and intense acceptance on top of the Empire State Building from Sleepless in Seattle. We can go on and on, daydreaming, pining, yearning, going drop dead crazy for the perfect love, the movie love, the literature type of love. Wanting to be seen with minimal effort, wanting our thoughts to be read in silence, wanting to be loved earnestly, and having our souls bared open while the other person admires the stars in our eyes and the love in our chest cavity.

Is it cruel to be a dreamer in a dog eat dog world? Being stuck in a situationship when all you want is to have that suburban dream with two and a half children, or be in a Mediterranean city, sipping coffee in the morning, watching the sunrise, child free? Even the small things seem impossible nowadays. Wanting a text back, wanting the I’d love to pick you up, wanting the inside jokes, bloody voracious for the effort, but all you get is a late good morning, a half assed response, and not even, because why would you type out the whole thing when you could say gm?

It should be illegal to have hopeless romantics and derelicts exist in the same sphere. At a certain age, there should be aptitude tests to see who has a heart and who doesn’t. The sharks belong with the sharks and the swans belong with the swans. Lovers belong with lovers. One wrong relationship, one single trauma, one painful breakup can undo us and reset the trajectory of our whole life. It isn’t like the movies, yet the Hollywood industry has been booming for giving us delusions for a century and perhaps will continue to do so for another.

It feeds into the system that pulls idealistic and foolish thoughts into our heads, and then sends us back into the real world, shit world, cut throat world, settle down with someone you don’t want world, pine for that idea of romance you could never have world.

For me, it’s like this: my father, when he was a child, loved ice cream. He wanted it a lot and the sadness of what he couldn’t have still lingers, decades later. Since he and my grandparents were poor at the time, he didn’t get what he wanted. Now he can buy ice cream whenever he wants, but his teeth have grown sensitive and it hurts to eat ice cream. Imagine that. Love hurts. The cruel thing is when you can finally have what you wanted desperately for so long, like genuine love, you don’t want it anymore. It took too long. You took too long. You took too long and here you are, at my doorstep. The audacity. You don’t feel that same desire. It can become easier, available, even without cost, but it doesn’t pull you the same way. I watch it hover above me blissfully, like a cloud, and I just continue lazing in the sun. The shortened texts and careless excuse of a potential love doesn’t even phase me. It took me so long to perfect my method. To teach myself, feed myself, over and over again, this is how it is. One step. Two step. Cry and then dry your tears. It’s a stern dance that became my go to party move. Some people get it, and some people don’t. That’s just how it is.

You become an oracle and learn to read the ending before the movie begins. Who needs to stick around for the theatre experience?

Sarah talks about wanting the little things that should not feel like too much. She talks about wanting the message that says someone would love to pick you up, the inside jokes, the feeling that another person is actually thinking about you. She talks about what happens when you keep wanting those things and keep receiving less, until you have to teach yourself that less is enough.

Her story about her father and the ice cream stayed with me most. He wanted ice cream when he was young and could not have it, and now that he can buy it whenever he wants, his teeth hurt when he eats it. There is something almost unbearable about that. Sometimes life does give you the thing you spent years asking for. It just waits until you have become someone who cannot enjoy it anymore.

I think love can do that to us.

You can spend years wanting to be chosen, and then when someone finally chooses you, you are suspicious of them. You can spend years wanting someone to stay, and then when they stay, you start looking for the reason they will leave. You can spend years asking someone to love you properly, and when someone finally does, you realise you have forgotten what it feels like to receive it without fear.

What a terrible thing to become good at.

To be so used to disappointment that disappointment feels safer than hope.

There is a scene I imagine sometimes. It is raining outside. You are standing in a doorway, and the person you once wanted more than anything is standing on the other side. Their clothes are wet. They look tired. They have finally come to say what you waited years to hear. They finally understand. They finally know what they did to you. They finally want to stay.

And you are looking at them, thinking about all the nights you spent wishing they would come back.

You thought this would be the part where you ran into their arms.

Instead, you just look at them.

That is what scares me about desire. It can survive rejection, loneliness, distance, and heartbreak. What it cannot always survive is time. Time has a way of taking something you wanted desperately and turning it into something you barely recognise.

You can miss someone until the missing becomes part of your personality. You can make peace with an empty space. You can arrange your life around it. You can learn which parts of yourself to keep away from other people. Then, when someone tries to fill that space, you realise you had already made a home there.

And I do not know whether that is healing or another form of damage.

People love to say that you should never stop believing in love. I understand why they say it. It sounds hopeful. It sounds like something we are supposed to believe after heartbreak. But sometimes I do not want hope. Sometimes hope feels like being asked to open a door I have spent years learning how to lock.

I am tired of being told that the right person will make it easy. I am tired of the idea that if something is real, you will know. Sometimes you do know. Sometimes you know exactly what you are looking at, and you still cannot bring yourself to touch it.

Because you remember what happened the last time you did.

That is the strange thing about becoming guarded. You do not become fearless. You become familiar with fear. You learn where it lives in your body. You learn the feeling of someone becoming distant. You learn the silence that comes before the goodbye. You learn how quickly affection can turn into indifference, and eventually you start leaving at the first sign of weather.

You become very good at reading endings.

Sarah called it becoming an oracle, knowing how the story ends before the movie has even begun. I think she is right. There is something sad about watching the opening scene of your own love story and already knowing which part will hurt.

Maybe that is why some of us never let the story begin.

We call it standards. We call it self-respect. We call it knowing our worth. Sometimes it is all of those things. Sometimes it is just fear wearing better clothes.

Because what if this person really does love you? What if they really do stay? What if there is no betrayal waiting around the corner? What if you finally get the thing you spent your whole life wanting and the only person standing in the way of it is you?

I wish I had a beautiful answer for that.

I do not.

I only know that there are people who have wanted love for so long that they eventually learned how to live without it. There are people who once stared at their phones waiting for one name to appear and now feel nothing when it does. There are people who would have crossed an ocean for someone once, and today they would not cross the street.

Maybe that is the death of desire.

Because when it exists in front of you and you no longer feel the need to reach for it.

And maybe the saddest love story is not about two people who could not be together.

Maybe it is about the person who wanted love their whole life, finally found it, looked at it for a long time, and realised they had already taught their heart how to live without it.

Co-Author Substack ID: Sarah Azad

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~Hasif
Editor, Postcards by Hasif