CHAPTER NINE.

DESIRE.

Many of the messages we internalize as women about our bodies, our worth, and our status boil down to one through line: we need something outside ourselves to be worthy because the problem is not out in the world but within us.

We are subtly taught we need to change ourselves to fit the world, not change our worlds to fit ourselves. More makeup, this season’s clothes, a different diet, a new workout plan, another habit stacked, a stricter morning routine, a few injections, another self-care ritual, this supplement, and also that one. We are not taught to ask ourselves what we need or want; rather, we are lured to search for answers in the world outside us.

I soaked up these messages like a sponge, praying their promises of worth proved true. I needed this product for better skin because better skin would make me prettier and prettier would make me worthy. I needed these clothes to work out because working out would make me skinnier and skinnier would make me worthy. I needed this pill to fix my problems because not having problems would make me more amicable and being more amicable would make me worthy. I needed this diet because diets fix people and being fixed makes you worthy.

I drank the proverbial Kool-Aid sold to us every day through the underlying messaging of the media, advertisements, and influencers we constantly absorb without noticing. Each sip took me a bit farther from myself.

So, when I wasn’t interested in sex within my relationship, I thought it was me, not my circumstance. Whenever I got the feeling something in my life wasn’t quite right, like maybe I should want to have sex with my boyfriend, I erased the worry with the applicable messaging I had unknowingly internalized. Women don’t have as high a sex drive as men. It was low libido because I used to be on birth control. It was low libido because I was not on birth control. It was low libido because I needed birth control. I was a woman who was not interested in sex because something was wrong with me, not with my circumstances. I just needed to figure out how to change myself, how to make myself better to fit into my world, and then I would be okay.

Maybe I needed more red meat in my diet or more plants or less dairy or more fruit. Maybe I needed that supplement for my sex drive or the powder for my coffee or the cream to adjust my hormones. Maybe I needed more sleep or maybe I was getting too much or maybe I needed something to help me sleep.

What could I buy or take to make me feel like I fit into the life I was living?

I knew it couldn’t be my circumstances because I had done what I was told I was supposed to do to be happy. I had the degrees, the relationship, the job. I had everything I was told to chase and accumulate to be worthy and okay. It was me that was the problem, not my world. But maybe I needed the dog, the ring, or the house to feel better. Maybe all the validation that swoops in when you decide to commit yourself to someone else would ease my discomfort. Maybe the itch I felt was actually just for the next step and not for the escape.