The Self-Sufficiency Kink: THe SaFE WORD FOR MAY WAS EROS
- Jul 28
- 4 min read
Eros was my card for May. I assumed that meant something good was coming. The kind of card that makes me want to crop all of my oversized shirts, and listen to ER Fightmaster on repeat because Pride month is coming. I figured May was going to be juicy.
Instead, Eros showed up like a horny little caseworker for my abandoned wants and said, "ma'am, we need to talk about the self-sufficiency kink."
But where Did You Put the Wanting?
My therapist said something to me recently that I haven't been able to put down. She said it seems like I forgo wanting and default to getting it myself, because I don't trust I'll be met. I gave her side eyes and a very audible "well that's a mean thing to say."
Then a quiet but clocked "rude" under my breath.
I don't let myself want. Not the kind with teeth.
I'll need things. Needs are fine, needs are defensible, needs come with receipts and a clear case for why everyone benefits from them getting met. But wanting, the kind that depends on someone else to show up and deliver, I skip that part. I convert it into a project before it can embarrass me.
It's not that I think I'm a burden. It's not that I don't think I deserve things. It's that wanting with vulnerability attached has a historical record, and my body has reviewed it. The times I asked. The gap between asking and being met. The way that gap teaches you, quietly, over years, to stop leaving the door open for something that mostly doesn't come through it.
So I stopped asking. I got very good at doing it myself. I got so good at it that it stopped feeling like a workaround and started feeling like a personality.
I'm an eldest daughter who was deemed the family's golden child. I was born to be unmet.The thing about being good at not wanting is that it works. For a long time it really worked. I became capable. Reliable when it mattered. The person who figured it out.
Nobody worried about me because I handled my business, whatever it was, without anyone having to bear witness to my want. I stopped being a variable in other people's equations. At first it felt like safety. Eventually, like disappearing.
Eros is not interested in my coping strategies. Eros doesn't care that my system is hella efficient. Eros showed up in May and looked up and down all my beautiful self-sufficiency and said "ma'am. where did you put the wanting."
I don’t fucking know, bitch. That’s why I’m in therapy.
DEsIRE DEFERRED IS DESIRED MANAGED
There used to be this horizon. There's always been a horizon. The next move, the next version, the next big thing to metabolize the ache into momentum. If I stay busy enough, move across the country for the 6th time, I don't have to feel what I want right now, in this body, in this life, from these specific people.
Desire deferred is desire managed.
I used to be an excellent manager, until I became a feral racoon trash-grabbing entrepreneur creeping 40.
Safe to say the horizon is gone. Not in a bad way, exactly.
In a true way. I have a family. I have my work. I have "the" work. I have a life I actually built, which is real and good and on my terms (unless my toddler is home). There is no next reinvention waiting to absorb the feeling.
That's when want shows up looking through the backdoor like a serial killer.
And here is where Eros gets mean. It’s lusty little eyes peaking in like a pervert demands an answer to the question I have been outrunning: what do you want now. Not someday. Not when things change. Not in the hypothetical life where wanting is commonplace and someone is definitely coming. Now. In this room.
I’ve been so busy being capable that I forgot how to want out loud.
CONSEQUENCES OF WARM BLOODED WANTING
Here's what I know about wanting. Wanting that depends on someone else is not just a preference. It's exposure. You feel naked, sometimes you are naked. It requires hope. It requires waiting in a way that is completely outside your control.
It requires leaving a door open and not knowing if anyone is coming through it. I've got concerns.
And the data said: convert. Convert the want into a plan, a project, a thing you can execute alone at 11pm without requiring anything from anyone. Convert longing into competence. Convert the ache into output. It worked. It genuinely worked.
I am extremely good at being alone inside my own wanting. It’s fuel for my business, but fuel is flammable.
Eros didn't create the longing. Eros just showed up in May with a flashlight and pointed at it. All of it. The wanting I filed away. The asking I skipped. The door I quietly stopped leaving open because the gap between asking and being met had gotten too expensive to keep feeling.
It's still there. The wanting didn't die. It didn't calcify into indifference or evolve into some enlightened non-attachment.
It just went stealth and non-verbal.
I don’t know what that means, but I can tell you that it’s unbearable and undeniable, and feels like three dots in a text thread that appear, disappear, reappear, and then vanish.
About Amanda — the Entraprenotsure™ behind MYQB.
I'm a queer, neurodivergent, recovering perfectionist who built a business out of grief, creativity, and way too many browser tabs. I’m not here to give you a one-size-fits-all formula. I’m here to help amplify your voice, your rhythm, and a way of showing up that feels like you.
I started Mind Your Queer Business for the misfits, the feelers, the overthinkers, and the creatively stubborn—especially those building empires in nap time increments. Around here, we build brands and marketing strategies that actually make sense for who you are, not who the internet told you to be. If you’ve ever felt like entrepreneurship wasn’t built for someone like you, good news: you get to rebuild it.
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