Oh for fuck’s sake...yes it is!
If it isn’t true then what the fuck have I been doing all my life?
Ummmm, ignoring my needs and pretending that is strong. I guess, I am going to have to look at this one a little more deeply.
One of the saddest moments of my life was, after my divorce, deciding I wanted to online date (it was sad for a number of reasons). I scrolled back through my photos, like all the way back to the beginning of my phone. Years rolled by. Events, parties, life stuff flashed before me and I was barely in any of the photos and there were none, none of me alone. Not a single one. No one in my life, not a friend, not my family, not my husband, not my kids, no one thought I was important enough to photograph. Not one single person, Including me. That was a very hard day..and actually for months that followed.
There I was present in my life, showing up for it every single day, doing a great deal of heavy lifting and there was not one photo where I ranked highly enough for someone to have documented my existence, my participation, my efforts or the fact that whatever we were doing was largely, if not totally, planned and orchestrated by me. But I was nowhere to be found.
I was kind of devastated. Ok, I was heartbroken. There I was showing up all the damn time for everyone else and I wasn’t even important to document along the way. I had countless photos of my ex-husband. I had zillions of photos of my kids. Tons of my friends and my family. But most of the photos I wasn’t even in, and if I was, it was in a crowd.
I will tell you this plagued me and haunted me for a long fucking time. How did this happen? Whose fault was it? Whose responsibility was it to change it?
Well, I know now, that it happened because I acted as if not having needs or ignoring my needs made me strong.
Yep, the fact I wasn’t in a single fucking photo, as much as I wanted to blame everyone else, was a direct result of me teaching everyone I was relating to and with, that I either didn’t have needs, or they weren’t important. If you want to become a footnote in your own life, just ignore your own needs. That is testament to a complete pass for everyone else to ignore them too.
And you would think, when this whole photo thing landed, I would have taken remedial action forthwith. And I guess I did. But I will tell you that last week, I schlept all of my bags when leaving an overnight stay all by myself and when I was offered assistance, I refused it. I made seven trips instead of letting someone else help me. So how much have I really learned?
I grew up believing that needing things was weak. And if there was one thing I did not want to be, it was that. I saw that life seemed to go better for those who were self sufficient and not needy. And I made a decision that both saved my life and curtailed it also. I made a decision that I would make my own fortune. I would be a single parent. I would provide for myself. I would do this life...solo. And I have. And while I am not sorry or feel short changed (I have had an amazing life) I do regret that I didn’t think that perhaps there might be some middle ground between complete self autonomy and complete fucking dependence.
And I did all of my ignoring of my needs as some sort of supplication to strength. If I needed nothing, from no one then I would be living and demonstrating strong. WRONG! What I realize now, perhaps too late, is that all I have done is put a lot of distance between myself and others. I have been strong, but within that strength, very weak indeed.
I have learned, quite painfully, ignoring your own needs doesn’t make you strong. It makes you resentful. It makes you exhausted. Ignoring needs doesn’t mean you don’t have them. It only ensures that needs are never, ever met. And in my experience, those unmet needs roil beneath my surface and tear me apart. And they wreck sweet relationships and love.
I have learned that in order to be in a loving union of any kind, both people have to be responsible for their needs. And be able to communicate them with clarity as to who is responsible for meeting any particular need. And when you grow up with a toxic ideal of self sufficiency, this will always be hard for you. Like super fucking hard.
And one day you just might wake up and realize that your whole worship of strength by ignoring has really only brought you ignorance and it isn’t the blissful kind at all.
It has taken me a lot of work to own my own needs. And I really do live in fear of appearing needy at all. Of course, I am needy sometimes and this is ok and acceptable and part of the human experience. But if I am honest, the thing I want most in this world is to need no one for anything. Which is such a set up because I will never, ever be able to meet that goal. And if I did ever achieve it, I would have only succeeded in ruining my own life.
What I have learned in this life long quest not to need is that it is actually ok to need things from people. And if you need things from people, they are going to let you down. No one can fulfill all your needs, ever. And ultimately, you are responsible for getting needs met and not the other way around.
But you are never going to be truly strong by ignoring your own needs. In fact, you will weaken yourself to a point of destruction if you do this. You, like me, will wake up one day and realize that even though you have been there living your life for years, decades even, you will not have been important enough to even document your presence.
My life since leaving that marriage has been about a reclamation of me. I got lost, so very lost in the roles of wife and mother. And there was no room for me as an individual. Leaving that marriage and removing the role of wife, freed me up to explore who I might be and what I might need. And one of the most basic things I needed was to be present in my own life and have photos of me living that life. Thank God for selfies. I am sure that if I didn’t take them, then I would still have very little photographic evidence to show for my own existence. So the shamless selfies I take far too often are now my counterbalance to my toxic and destructive need to not need.
There is a guy I see from time to time, and we went out a few weeks ago and unbeknownst to me, he took photos of me when we were out and about. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t make a big deal about it and I was totally unaware. Then a few days later, he sent them to me. I wasn’t doing anything exciting, just playing air hockey, but those were the best photos I have received in a very long time. It meant the world to me that I was important enough to him for him to take the photos in the first place. And you know what, those photos are some of the best candid shots of me that I have ever taken. I have documentation that I was there, living, breathing, dating and someone other than me thought that was an important enough thing to photograph. I am gonna call this progress!
So yes I have needs and I think the strongest thing I have ever done is to stand within those needs and own them as my own. Not pretend they don’t exist. Not deny they exist. Not attempt to avoid them with some ridiculous act of bravado. But to stand within the need and call it out for what it is. Now that is strong. And hot. And fucking hard. But to rise above all the language and feelings and ideas that I should not have the need or somehow I should resolve the need all by myself, but to share that I have this need with another person on this planet is perhaps one of the strongest and bravest things I have ever done.
Again...still.
Fuck.
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