Being Needed

I was comfortable being needed.

I could provide, protect, solve, work, organize, and carry. Usefulness gave me a role and a measure. If another person needed something from me, I could respond with action. Even when the action was difficult, I understood what strength was supposed to look like.

Needing someone else felt different.

It placed part of my life beyond my control. Another person could misunderstand, disappoint, refuse, leave, or simply be unable to give what I hoped to receive. Need made me visible in exactly the place where the old rule said visibility was dangerous.

The interviews kept finding that place. Desire carried the wish for companionship and the hope of being chosen. Strength raised the question of whether I could accept help without treating it as evidence that I had failed. Recognition, grief, belonging, and faith kept returning me to the people whose love mattered, the people I could lose, the people who would claim me and whom I was responsible to claim, and the God I could not reduce to self-sufficiency.

These were not separate discoveries. They were the same resistance appearing under different names.

I permitted myself to carry more easily than I permitted myself to be carried.