When No One Says “Stay”
There’s a moment where wanting to be wanted turns into something quieter. Something harder to name. Not desperation, not exactly. Not sadness either. Just… the aching knowledge that no one’s coming to take the need away. And in that moment, I don’t just want to be wanted anymore. I want to be numb.
Sometimes submission feels like a substitute for silence — a way to be undone in someone else’s hands before I do it to myself. If someone else pulls the need out of me, fucks it out of me, uses it up...then I don’t have to carry it alone. But when that doesn’t arrive — when no one responds, when no one takes — the ache folds in on itself. It stops being hunger and starts becoming weight.
That’s when the craving shows up. Not always for sex. Not even for him. For something else. Something I used to chase in the bottom of a bottle, something that promised to take the edge off the wanting.
Because alcohol was never just about chaos. It was about quiet. It was about muting the echo of wanting to be wanted and not feeling chosen. It was about softening the shame of needing too much, feeling too much, reaching and being met with politeness instead of possession. It was about erasing myself before anyone else could.
And sometimes, when I crave a drink now, it’s not the taste I want — it’s the option to disappear. To not have to be the girl who’s still waiting to be chosen. Still aching after polite goodnights. Still staring into a kind of silence that doesn’t hurt outright — it just doesn’t reach back.
I stay sober, but the craving isn’t always for alcohol. Sometimes it’s for a break from being full of need. Sometimes it’s for the version of me who doesn’t mind being unseen.
But I don’t drink anymore. I sit with it. I write. I let the ache stay loud. Because maybe this ache — this not disappearing — is the clearest sign I’m still alive. Still wanting. Still here. Still mine.
