What do you want?

I wish I knew what I wanted anymore. I wish I knew what other people wanted so that I could decide how to act. But that means that my actions are contingent on others' desires--and they really are. It doesn't mean I can't be independent. I think it means more that I care more for what others want than what I want. Or maybe I'm so good at adapting and assimilating that whatever they want simply becomes what I want, too. At the very least, whatever they want becomes what I try to attain--most likely for them.

I wish my decision-making process could be based on solely me, because at the end of each day, I have only myself. If I keep making decisions to make others happy, where will I end up? Surely, I could be happy with them, but only momentarily, because by achieving their happiness and desire, I will somehow have neglected my own.

But what if my happiness is completely contingent on others'? How sad is that? Or how selfless is that? But that's exactly it... I don't want to be that selfless yet. I have said before that I wish to someday be as selfless as my mother has always been. But I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet. I want to continue to be selfish and to go after what I want. So why don't I? Why do I keep asking people what they want and waiting to act on that when I know that it differs so clearly from what I want?

It's probably because I'm afraid to go after what I want, to make my own mistakes. I'm afraid to have only myself to blame if anything goes wrong. If I make my decisions based on what somebody else wants, I will, in a way, have a scapegoat. Or, at the very least, an excuse. In this sense, then, it seems that I am less independent than I claim and more dependent than I would like to admit.

So, the question I should stop asking is, "What do you want?"
And the question I should start asking is, "What do I want?" I need to stop scaring myself into thinking that I'll take a wrong step, that I'll disappoint myself. I used to tell people that it's okay to make the same mistakes twice, because there's more than one lesson to every one of them. Now I'm afraid to make a mistake even once. But I now acknowledge that by taking no step and doing nothing pertaining to what I want, I am making quite possibly the biggest mistake of all.

What do you I want?

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