Geneen Roth

I’m thinking of cupcakes and friendship and wanting a friend who is no longer a friend to give me cupcakes I won’t eat because cancer and sugar don’t mix and the truth is we were friends but not close friends because I was never truly myself with her although when I heard this friend was giving cupcakes to people it made me feel left out and I don’t like being left out and this cupcake friend has asked for many things over the years like sitting with her during chemotherapy and I haven’t asked for anything says my mind so cupcakes are the least she could do as long as she is making them for people who haven’t sat with her when she was sick because although I no longer eat cupcakes or want to be her friend I want to be wanted by anyone, everyone, even those I don’t like which prompts me to ask if I want to be wanted by this friend and the answer is no because the love I received never felt like love although I was so busy wanting to be wanted that I ran over the signals and why I ask myself would I want to be given cupcakes that I wouldn’t eat by a friend who isn’t a friend and one answer might be that I’d rather want than have which may have started with my mother who I wanted to love me in a way that felt like love wanted her to call me sweetheart but the mother I had could not have done that because of her own loneliness and although I convinced myself for 50 years that I wanted my particular mother to want me it’s not true because even if my mother said oh sweetheart her words would have been curdled by her unhappiness and I wouldn’t have felt cherished which is all I wanted and all I want from cupcakes I won’t eat by a friend who isn’t a friend and now that I name this desire to want something from someone who cannot give it I turn toward myself which is a radical act which feels like a gnawing in my belly but after 30 seconds it becomes a feeling of being unloved empty and as soon as I feel that there is a soft green rain surrounding the emptiness and now it doesn’t feel terrible it feels like the unlove which is what the wanting is made of is being met by kindness which is itself a cherishing which is all I ever wanted from cupcakes.