The wanting

It began, as most things do, with a longing.

Not a loud one. Not the kind that breaks doors or screams into voids.

This one was quieter. A pulse beneath the skin.

A shadow behind every other thought. A wanting so old it didn’t need a name.

It found her when she was twelve.

A girl with too-wide eyes and silent hunger.

She stood at the edge of the school auditorium stage, behind red curtains that smelled like dust and dreams. The other girl was center stage, speaking lines she knew by heart. Lines that were supposed to be hers.

The applause when the monologue ended felt like thunder.

It echoed in her skull.

She smiled with her lips.

But her hands were clenched.

Her stomach hollow.

And inside, something bloomed.

The wanting.

Not jealousy. Not exactly.

It was more ancient than that.

It was need.

To be seen.

To be chosen.

To be the reason people clapped.

She thought it was ambition.

They all did.

The teachers called her driven.

The director called her hungry.

Her parents called her gifted.

But it was deeper.

And it would not stop growing.

She began staying late after school, alone in the music room.

Practicing monologues until her throat hurt.

Watching recordings of herself until her eyes went glassy.

Listening to interviews of actresses who never cried on stage, because they cried too often off it.

She stopped crying.

She stopped a lot of things.

She stopped playing with friends after school.

Stopped going to birthday parties.

Stopped doing anything that didn’t feed the thing inside her.

She told herself it was worth it.

And for a while, it was.

She got the lead role the next year.

The stage lights hit her face like fire.

The audience leaned forward when she spoke.

She felt the air change when she walked into a room.

The wanting purred.

Satisfied.

Temporarily.

But that’s the thing about it.

It is never fed for long.

Soon, school plays weren’t enough.

She auditioned for local theater.

When she didn’t get a part, she didn’t cry.

She broke a lamp in her bedroom and blamed the cat.

Her father bought her a better one.

She didn’t thank him.

By fifteen, she had an agent.

By sixteen, she had a manager.

By seventeen, she was working so often she finished high school on film sets and FaceTime calls.

She didn’t mind.

She liked the pace.

No time to feel.

Only forward.

The wanting lived in her chest like a second heart.

It told her what to do.

Cut your hair.

Change your name.

Don’t post that.

Don’t eat that.

Smile wider.

Cry prettier.

Be the kind of girl they remember.

So she obeyed.

It worked.

Fame came like a flood.

Magazine covers. Red carpets.

Producers who shook her hand too long and said she was mature for her age.

Makeup artists who called her face perfect and meant it like a curse.

Fans who wrote her letters that said, “You saved my life,” and expected her to keep doing it.

The wanting clapped from the sidelines.

More.

She turned eighteen in a hotel room in Berlin, between shooting scenes for a war movie where her character died crying in a river.

She celebrated by standing alone in the bathroom, staring at her reflection.

She whispered, “You made it.”

But the words felt fake.

Because she had not made anything.

She was still reaching.

Still chasing.

Still not enough.

When the director praised her, she smiled.

When he told her he wished she were older, her stomach twisted.

She said nothing.

She had learned by then that silence was currency.

The wanting told her that pain was a cost.

And she believed it.

So when she turned down college, no one was surprised.

She was already more successful than most adults she knew.

But success did not feed the hollow.

It made it deeper.

Wider.

Brighter.

People loved her.

Millions of them.

Online, on TV, in crowds behind velvet ropes.

But none of them saw her.

Not really.

Not the girl with chapped lips and bitten nails.

Not the one who practiced her smiles in mirrors until they were flawless masks.

Not the one who woke up at 3 a.m. convinced she was a fraud.

Her mother called less and less.

Her best friend from middle school unfollowed her on Instagram.

She did not chase them.

There was no room for stillness.

Stillness was a threat.

So she filled it.

New projects. New scripts.

More press, more premieres, more roles that broke her open and stitched her back together wrong.

She began to forget how her real laugh sounded.

She replaced it with a louder one.

More photogenic.

Approved.

She dated someone famous.

He called her brilliant and left six months later, saying she was never there.

She said, “I’m always busy.”

He said, “No, you’re always gone.”

She didn’t argue.

She didn’t miss him.

She missed the girl she pretended to be around him.

But only sometimes.

The rest of the time, she missed nothing at all.

She became a star.

She shined so bright people stopped asking questions.

Until the night she won the award.

The one everyone said she’d get.

The gold one.

The one she’d dreamed of since she was fourteen.

They called her name.

She walked to the podium.

She gave the speech.

Thanked her team. Thanked her fans. Thanked the industry.

She cried, just enough.

She smiled, just right.

She walked offstage into a thunder of approval.

And then sat alone in the dressing room for three hours, staring at her own reflection, holding the statue in her lap like a stranger.

She whispered, “Now what?”

And the wanting answered.

More.

She thought of a role she hadn’t played yet.

A continent she hadn’t filmed on.

A headline she hadn’t owned.

She thought of her father’s voice, years ago.

“You know, it’s okay to be still sometimes.”

She hadn’t spoken to him in eight months.

She picked up her phone.

Paused.

Put it down.

She wasn’t ready to stop.

She told herself it was because there was still more to make, more to do, more to become.

But really, she did not know who she would be if she stopped moving.

She feared the stillness.

In stillness, the wanting grows louder.

By twenty-six, she had done everything.

And nothing.

She lived in a house with ten rooms.

But her bedroom had no curtains.

She liked the light.

She liked pretending she could outrun the dark.

She slept two hours a night.

Ate what assistants placed in front of her.

Looked at pictures of herself from five years ago and wondered when the color drained from her face.

Her doctor said she had anxiety.

Her therapist said she had burnout.

Her publicist said she was a machine.

She nodded.

Machines do not need rest.

Machines keep working.

But one night, after a shoot in the mountains, after a fourteen-hour day and another one waiting, she sat in a trailer with a cup of tea she hadn’t asked for, and felt something shift.

She looked at her hands.

They were shaking.

Not from cold.

From emptiness.

And the wanting whispered, “Don’t stop now.”

She whispered back, “I don’t know what else to give.”

The wanting purred.

“There is always more.”

She stood.

Walked outside.

Looked at the sky.

The stars were clearer here.

For a moment, she imagined letting go.

Dropping everything.

Becoming no one.

But the wanting would not let her.

It had become her bones.

It had taken her voice and returned it only for performance.

She no longer knew how to speak without script.

No longer knew how to cry unless someone was filming.

She was the dream people wished for.

And she hated that dream.

Because it had eaten her alive.

Now, thirty years old, she is still working.

Still filming.

Still posting the right photos and smiling the right way.

But the wanting has gone quiet.

Not because it is gone.

Because it has won.

There is nothing left of her that it does not own.

She has stopped chasing.

Now she simply floats.

She does not want peace anymore.

She wants silence.

But silence is the one thing the wanting does not give.

So she keeps going.

And the world keeps clapping.

And no one sees the girl who disappeared.

Only the woman who stops at nothing.