We haven’t had so much snow in this area in forty years I think. It’s charming and reminds me of being in Idaho this time last year. I think it’s beautiful even as it reminds me of what I left behind.
I need to be not needed. More than I need water, or air.
I know it’s hard. I do. I am a difficult person to love. I don’t ask any to take me on. People just have to want it is all. And I love deeply and purely. It just doesn’t translate with normal people.
I’m tired of apologizing for being me and being hard to love. It hurts so much. Either I live with it and accept me, or I die. Those are the only choices I have. And there is no grey area, no muddy middle.
Each day I am in a constant battle to fight the tendencies to care too much about what others think. It’s the trauma of being raised without a safe way to dissent. As much as I crave solitude I love my people fiercely. Completely. I have a few forever people who I will carry to the day I die, whether they know it or not.
My parents, my sister, my Stardust, first loves, kindred spirits, they are always with me. And what’s awful about that is most don’t know it. How much I think of them every goddamned day and how they’ve shaped my life. They are some of my forever people.
I have others, far fewer, who know it. Even if I don’t tell them often enough.
Because I really, truly, deeply need to not be needed.
And why?
I’m only starting to understand it. Tendrils of ideas are finally taking hold in my brain as I try to figure it out. Thing is, trauma shapes our brains as we grow. And either we figure out how to cope with it or it kills us. If we survive it we find ways to heal it. My brain is shaped to be receptive to others in magnanimous ways. I wasn’t allowed my own will in most outward things that are visible to others. So I became very adept at sensing what others need. To the extent that it was ALL I could sense.
This happens every day even with just strangers. If I begin to care about someone it is ever-amplified a thousand times over.
I’m drowned out. I can’t sense me any longer. All I am is a receptor to THEIR needs because my entire upbringing I was shaped to be exactly that. I’m a puzzle piece perfectly shaped measured and cut and FUCKING HELL I’m so GODSDAMNED TIRED of it!!!
I’m tired of being attentive at every moment to every need my person has. Of worrying about even how they’re breathing and if they’re comfortable and what do they think of this color I’m wearing and am I hungry they must be too what can I do to show I love them and make them smile but I needed to go run an errand but it doesn’t matter because their needs trump my own at ALL times no matter what because that’s. How. I. Was. Raised.
I did this for three decades in an organization ruled by fat white men in New York. I gave everything they asked me to and gave up my dreams because I was forever working for a future that was decided for me before I was born. I left the cult and the marriage and kept serving others trying to make the world a better place and giving myself to people who needed me, against my better judgement in many cases. I kept giving and giving, my love, my help, my ear, my time, my body, my freedom, my everything I possibly could. I kept serving long after leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And I didn’t realize it.
After a lifetime of being so attentive to other’s needs that I disappeared…I decided I was tired. Tired of being needed so much that my own will vaporizes. So now I choose to not be needed, as much as I can. It’s not because I am denying someone’s needs. It’s because I can’t even hear my own. To hear mine I have to pay attention. And if a need of someone I love is near, then I can’t hear me anymore. I try to listen to my needs first, THEN hear theirs, otherwise I get them confused.
I need to not be needed. I can’t live my life as I choose without that freedom. And I am not going to fight for my right to insist on it anymore. It just is.
Just as everyone has the right to walk away from such an odd human who needs to not be needed. The ones who understand stay for the right reasons.
A Burd in Flight 