Growing Pains

If there is one thing in my life that I can say has been constant, then it is being needed.

I have never had a single relationship in my life that has not required something or another from me. Where the person has not needed me to fill some void or unmet desire. From my mother, to my sister, to my friends from elementary school through college, to every boyfriend or every co-worker. There has never been a relationship where my sole purpose was not to provide.

Until now.

As much as I have always complained about how stretched thin that others have made me feel, I have gotten used to it. I have spent the last 24+ years creating the niche of "need-filler-extraordinaire" for myself. I know it well. Very well.


I do not know how to interact with someone when I can't do anything for them. Even more disconcerting is when my help is not wanted. I just don't know how to behave. It is like being a fish out of water. My natural environment has been eliminated.


The thing is that I know I will grow to like it. I know that, once I ease into it, I will be more at ease than I have ever been. Ba dum chi.

I know that I have enough on my plate to not have to worry much about another person. Yet, it is something that I need to adjust myself to: not worrying. I am so used to having to placate or make allowances or prove my worth. For fear that I will lose. That I will be left.


I do not know if that fear will ever disappear.

However, I do know that the more I focus on myself. The more that I hone in on the things that I need to do, the more I realize that I don't need to do things for anyone else. The more that I realize that the one thing that I need is someone who doesn't need me.

Further, someone who doesn't need me for any reason but to want me.


This is such a foreign concept to me. One that I never really recognized as being at the core of so many of my problems. So much of my anxiety, so many of my issues with my body, so many sleepless nights are due to my fretting about others rather than myself.

Over the last year or so, I have tried my best to connect every action that I take back to me. To recognize how things that I do serve me and how they do not. That has helped me in several respects.

Yet, I am primarily looking without. I have not been looking at how I can alter my actions to better suit me. I have been focusing on finding purpose. What I need to do now is to recognize how to modify my actions when they are not truly serving my best interests. Which, obviously, requires me to develop a hierarchy of what my priorities are.

This will be a bit of a tricky process. It is likely to be unpleasant. It is likely to not be fun. It is likely to force me to be more grounded and present. It is likely to be quite exhausting.


This will be a very rewarding process.

Growth is always painful because it forces us to push past the things that are holding us back.