I WANT MORE

By Lily Gutierrez

I wrote this story and Tiger and I created the art out of it.

If you’ve ever read any of my stories it will come as no surprise that there are trigger warnings

I also feel the need to preface this:

I know it may seem tone deaf to do an exhibition called I Want More given the current state of the world but I think we can want Palestine to be free, look out for others and still want more for ourselves. Our making ourselves small serves nothing.

Plus Story Time started 10 years ago and are you not sooo bored of a decade of me saying I want everything for everyone else?

Not all of you are going to agree with things this story but that ok I still love you and my aim wasn’t to write something universally true, I learned a long time ago that I can’t speak for others I can only tell my story so this is my story and thank you all for reading.

FUCK GRATITUDE, I WANT MORE

I’m so bored of wellness culture telling me to be grateful for my morning coffee while billionaires and psychopaths suck the earth dry of it’s every resource.

Fuck gratitude, I want more.

More sweetness

More comfort

More money

More sex

More play

More protection

More adventure

More sunshine

More Support

I have had my fair share of ups and downs. I count my chapters like cat lives because I think I died in some of them. Throughout them all, there is one thing that has tripped me up and that is gratitude.

Gratitude is the pacifier that has stopped me for asking for what I really need. Forced gratitude has cut off my intuition and stunted my desires.

For years I have meditated and masturbated, stayed hydrated and got enough sleep, all the while writing my morning pages. Thousands of lines. Being grateful for my basic human needs: but I wasn’t thriving and now I think I’ve had it all wrong.

Yes, there are miracles in life, they stab me like a heavenly sword in the chest:

My daughters tiny smile when she spotted me in the crowd at her nativity. 

Her anxious eyes had been darting forwards.

“Priscilla” I whispered from the front row.

She melted into a smile so sweet that I burst into tears. 

I could have died right there, watching her in her no line role as a tree.

The day in woods, laying so deep in bluebells we couldn’t see each other. I read Corinthians and made you believe in a God a world apart from organised religion.

Dappled light on my eyelids feeling like electric shock therapy on car rides down country lanes.

People that surprise me, excite me. Unexpected kindness. Shared understanding of invisible things.

All gifts that catch me off guard and make me feel alive.

And further back, too. I have memories that will keeping me laughing and smiling to my grave.

Catwalks and bungee jumps and rescue animals and my very own chocolate bar that tasted good. Stories of cults. Movie worthy romance. And endless embarrassments, once a calling mix up in NY led me to dance a Bollywood routine  on a live daytime TV show. It left people wondering if they’d witnessed Big Bird dancing.

But the other things that I’ve had gratitude for that have actually kept me small, are not it. I should spend less time being grateful not to have woken up in a screaming catastrophe and more compassionate to the fact that I’ve survived a few.

In short: Fuck gratitude. I. Want. More.

I remember one school run, it was 8.30am and I was wedged among other parents.

“How are you?” Another mum asked me,

“I wish I was on a tropical beach licking drugs off of a hot woman’s tits.” I replied, “You know the feeling?”

“Not really” she said with a sweetness that barely masked genuine concern.

That was two years ago and since then I have licked some tits and been in the sun but the feeling hasn’t changed, I want more.

I am a person that is so hungry for life. I wan’t to see everything, touch everything, taste everything, try it all. I want to hear every laugh and endlessly play and baywatch run into it all at hyperspeed.

But for the last couple of years I have not been doing that. I have lived almost exclusively in a quarter mile radius. Work. School run. Home. People have criticised my parenting, my in laws nicknamed my first daughter “The Little Orphan” because they thought I did such a shit job feeding and clothing her, but time will tell.

I wake my two daughters up with sexy music, we dance through breakfast. I wrestle them and teach them how to be kind but more importantly how to take a joke. They tell me I’m “slobby” looking and I tell them I wake up every morning in my body as if it’s a fresh miracle.

When they roll their eyes I also say the same thing I say to anyone that underestimates me: “give me a year.”

But they are right, I’m not reaching my potential when it comes to looks. Or my brain. Or anything. And the truth is I want more.

 Last year at a friends celebration I got talking to a guy I hardly know.

“How are you?” He asked (what a mistake!)

I told him I was working at a homeless charity, raising my daughters and eating well.

“Sounds nice.” He said

“I’d love to try doing the opposite.” I mused out of nowhere, “Just for a year.”

I went into a fantasy monologue in which I lose my ethics, ethos and empathy and am free to create havoc. I imagined working on wall street and making so much money I had to hide it everywhere. And living off coffee and slamming my whole face into a pyramid of coke and inhaling it all the way scarface does. And fucking endless prostitutes.

It felt good to imagine a life where I didn’t feel personally responsible for the entire planet and everyone/thing in it. It was freeing to think about.

Throughout the evening if I ran into him, I’d add more details in an endless conversation he had no interest in participating in.

“And I’d shout instead of talk”.     (I actually sometimes already do this.)

“And have massages with happy endings while taking work calls.”

“I’d do whatever I wanted and if someone didn’t like it I’d just pay them off. Hahahah”

It was so fun to imagine.

But the truth is I do have a conscious, and my whole life is responsibilities and you really couldn’t pay me to do coke.

I loved gangster films as a kids and I think I had always imagined my future as flashing lights, sequin outfits and cash. That’s not where I am today but I should note that I’ve had my fair share of private jet trips, private island stays and champagne and lobster breakfasts and it’s a lifestyle that I did sink into nicely when the opportunities arose.

I knew I wanted more but my brain was running sprint level into the idea of “more” that I’d been sold, through movies or media. It wasn’t personal to me. The more I tried to think of what I wanted the more it undulated like a flipping coin. If I imagined being a wall street banker, my next thought would be as simple as a change of scenery with someone who could really make me laugh. Yin and yang.

Often when I say one statement the opposite is underneath. If I’m in love with you, I might also fear you could break my heart. I’m at my funniest when I’m talking about things that are the saddest.

So to find out what I really want I also need to examine its shadow. The opposite of future desire is past shame. If real desire contains onions layers then I’m willing to unpeel and I know the only way to do that is to tell the truth.

And it’s uncomfortable to write this stuff but if I want it all (which I do) then the whole snake skin has to be shed.

There are reasons why I often feel like I have the biggest balls in the room, the same reasons why I don’t sweat the small stuff:

In other chapters bad things have happened to me and there were days I felt so unlovable I wished to be erased completely.

There are many more stories that will never leave my lips. In all these situations I had no one to tell. I blamed myself for not protecting myself better and my body crystallised in shame.

Years later when people did find out some of these stories I shrink wrapped them in humour. To sanitise them because shame can be ugly and some things that have happened to me aren’t pretty. Gratitude was the thing that discounted my experiences,  Each time something bad happened I told myself I should be grateful I was still alive. It could have been worse.

Sometimes I have to go backwards before I can move forwards and grow. I look at the layers of my life so that I can bring all of me with me into what comes next, because I think it’s going to be good and I’ve promised not to abandon myself and that includes the versions of me that have made me strong.

Scar tissue shines and I know the things that caused me shame have also given me superpowers. It took me being a psychological mastermind to escape nearly being killed. I have been in enough fights to know from looks and energy alone who could beat me , (and the numbers are few.)

I am the best ride or die you could ever ask for, nothing bad would ever happen to you on my watch. I smile at danger knowing my life will never again be as bad as it has been. All super powers.

Plus, most importantly, I’m the funniest person you’ll ever meet. (How could I not be, when I was a kid I went to see Harry Potter and when I got home my mum was dead).

So I’m smart and strong ( the strongest, probably) but also a little traumatised. 

Don’t worry it’s mostly been fixed by 20 years of therapy which took place across the globe and in every practice.

My senses and strengths make me feel like a jaguar but I know I’m probably still a little kitten.

I’m fucked up but at least I’m self aware. I’ve had moments of losing my power but it’s never dented my childlike curiosity for life or excitement for what comes next.

I want more protection. I want more fun and play. I want more connection and everything that’s the opposite of violence.

It’s always surprised me how little care is extended to strong people. They’re seen as independent and capable so support goes instead to people who seem more needy. Ha. I desire to be more needy. I want more neediness. Me being needy and people needing me. It actually sounds very sexy.

Anyway, for me, the stronger you are the more gently I will treat you. The more time I will give you. The more love or care I will extend. Because people don’t become strong without conquering odysseys and whether they share them or not I can feel them.

When I worked in an addiction program my clients often talked about the invisible language that could gain their trust. If you know addiction you know what I’m talking about. I can present what I want to the world, but my eyes, my words and my laugh can tell different stories to those that can read them.

I want more softness. I want more softness for all strong people.

I still want it all. For all of us.

In short, am I saying that people that have had a hard time deserve loads of money? Yes, I am.

So I’m pulling the bar out of the mud, I will no longer be grateful for things that cause me to struggle. I want more. More vitamin D meaning more sunshine and more sex. More cash, I want so much cash that I need a money counter to count it. I want it covering every surface in pyramid piles because what is money if not energy. And who cares if my life got to a point that I was loaded because I’m not the kind of person to hoard wealth, all my buds would get a piece of the pie. 

I would take my friends shopping Pretty Women style and dance for them while they threw money at me. We’d lay in bank notes and take pics of each other and give some to community groups and travel, tipping everyone along the way 800%.

I’m not saying that there aren’t people who need to be more grateful, there are I’ve met them. But if you already see magic in the world and already appreciate it all with every cell you have and seize every opportunity and love being alive and you’re being told by someone who doesn’t know you to be more grateful, or worse by the internet or an app, then take it with a pinch of salt.

My sister is a very grateful person and it bugs me because it means she doesn’t give herself enough credit for creating her life. 

I think balloons should fall from the sky every morning for how sweet and wise and balanced some of my friends are considering what they’ve been though. Gratitude implied things have been given when in most cases the things in my friends lives are things they’ve fought for.

I however, am not grateful. And not content. I’m not done, I’m just at the very beginning.

Personally gratitude made me small. It made me stay within the lines, obedient and never selfish. Concerned by worse things happening in the world to the point of discounting my own needs entirely. And it get’s addictive because it feels safe staying small. As if when I exist within the realm of peoples visions of me then I can’t get hurt because none of it’s real. But now I’m ready to grow to the size I’m supposed to be. I’m claiming myself.

In the past I prided myself on how much I could take without breaking. Fuck that. Moving forward I want to break at the tiniest unkindness. I want to be scooped up by the whole community and put in a bed surrounded by flowers and grapes.

Last year after a particularly exhausting year (but in no way the most exhausting) I went for a massage. The woman paused while rubbing my back, she told me, “it feels like you need to be wrapped in cotton wool.”

I want to wrapped in cotton wool. I want to hibernate in it and emerge like Julia Fox in a home made outfit formed from the fluffy white cotton, ready to party.

In conclusion, it’s probably not wise to ever ask me how I am. You’ll always get a weird answer.

And my hope is that this story and exhibition gives you permission to explore what you want too.

I’m saying fuck gratitude because I’m putting more weight into faith, love, and the one I’m exploring right now, desire. And today my desire is more play, less fear, and more people that are all in.

I can’t write anything that’s true. I know this because my thoughts and perspective change so rapidly that I’ve even had to delete parts of this story written just a couple of weeks ago because they already no longer apply to what I believe in.

All I can do is try to meet myself fresh each day. 

Sometimes you have to listen so deeply to hear what it is you truly want because desire is a live thing that flips and changes, but it’s worth chasing.

I am a person who was dealt a strange hand, if everyone else had playing cards I got tarot but I’ve somehow still managed to play the game. Depending on how you look at it I’m either incredibly unfortunate or the luckiest motherfucker on the planet. Yin and yang. It’s hard tell because my life had been endlessly cyclical, a casino game in which I win it all then throw the dice one more time and end up with nothing, always finding a way to start the game again.

Time to roll the dice. This time though, I’m almost certain I’m going to fucking win big.