by Sean Murray
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver, Late Fragment.
I miss surrendering myself, not in the way of giving up, but in the way of opening — spilling out with and without shame, letting someone else carry my weight for a while. To rest in their gaze, unclenched and unguarded.
But I’m not simple.
Alongside the longing runs a current of jealousy, of possessiveness. I want to be yours completely, yes, but I also want you to be mine, with no shadow left unclaimed. Vulnerability terrifies me, as it probably does you, because it means loosening my grip even as some part of me wants to close my fist around what I love.
I remember the moment I knew I was falling in love with my last partner. It wasn’t dramatic — no lightning bolt, no sudden swell of music. These things come suddenly — on a damp August evening, with a beautiful record on the turntable, her head on my shoulder, facing away from me in a way that seemed to quiet the room. My breath hitched, and at the same time, I felt a rush of panic. Love hit softly, a pull I surrendered to, and I felt myself leaning towards her, breath tightening. I hadn’t chosen it. I hadn’t even prepared for it. One second, I was myself, steady and guarded, and the next I was already leaning towards love, already gone. To lean towards her was to loosen my hold and feel whether she would hold me back.
And yet trust was always laced with its opposite. I think about the times I almost managed it — the surrender. Lying in bed with her, the room hushed, her breathing pressed against the side of my neck. For a few minutes, I could drift, let myself be held instead of holding. My muscles unfurled. And then, without warning, the thought would snap through me: what if she doesn’t feel the same, what if she turns away, what if she’s already begun to leave, or worse, what if she dies? My body would stiffen, my hand would tighten on her arm as though my grip could anchor her. I wanted both things at once: to dissolve into her warmth and to pin her there so she couldn’t move. Each touch, each breath, each quiet moment with her built slowly, forming the shape of intimacy before I even realised it.
I used to tell her to hold my hand properly. She’d let it rest limply in mine, loose and unyielding, barely pressing my skin, but I wanted the small insistence of her grip. I wanted to feel claimed, as though her hand could tether me in place and keep me from losing her. It was never really about the hand itself, of course. It was proof — a sign that she was present, that my grasp wasn’t unrequited. Love makes you greedy in strange ways. I wanted her to want me tightly enough to leave marks, to show — not tell — without words.
These small gestures — the pressure of her hand, the weight of her presence — taught me, in Nick Cave’s words, what it truly means to let love in and why I crave it still. Maybe that’s what intimacy is: a contradiction, an urge to fold into someone, and at the same time, the desire to claim them, to know they are yours alone. We talk about love as though it’s pure giving, a hand extended, a heart laid bare, but there’s always a shadow stitched to it: beneath surrender, there was the absolute dread that she might slip away, that openness could meet absence. To love is to risk watching the other person turn away while you’re still open, unmoored.
It’s strange how much of this feels biological, as if our bodies understand the paradox. The way we grip when we kiss, the way an embrace tightens before it loosens, the way hunger and tenderness inhabit the same touch, how we hold and release, how we own and are owned. Intimacy is never just one or the other; it’s both, interwoven, unresolvable.
And so I live in that in-between: craving the release of surrender and clutching at the certainty of possession. Some nights I imagine what it would feel like to fully let go again, to fall without reaching the edge, to lean towards her and hope she won’t let me slip. Other nights, I know myself too well: my jealousy is a wounded lion that never sleeps, my possessiveness a paw, curling around her hand even when she doesn’t notice.
Maybe this is what intimacy really is — not the clean sweetness we’re taught to expect, but the collision of hunger and fear, generosity and control. I wanted both release and hold, the letting go and the clenching at once. I don’t know if that makes me unfit for love or simply human.
When I strip everything away, what I’ve wanted, always, is what Carver names so plainly: to feel myself beloved on the earth, and to give that love back. That desire still lingers even in the spaces I cannot fully open. It shapes how I approach connection now, and how I meet others with care.
I miss surrendering myself; I suspect I always will. With that awareness, I continue to learn how to lean into connection, even when it feels fragile.
