neediness

I saw a post today that said, "I poured everything I had into you, and you were still empty".  It made me think about people I've known over the years that I just couldn't seem to do enough for.  Every problem I helped them to solve gave rise to a dozen more.  Every favour I did was met with a hand outstretched for more.  After awhile, some of them found themselves doing without me.  I just couldn't keep feeding into their needs.  I learned a new word, "enabler".  Learning what that meant helped me to see that sometimes, my "help" was actually a hindrance.  These people were being enabled by my help to keep needing.  Does that mean we shouldn't help people?  Of course not.  It did, however, cause me to think of something I had written on my blue print, the paper you get after CBT treatment has reached a certain point, and which outlines how you will be able to take care of yourself in the future.  I wrote down that I would learn to help people within reason.  The reason I wrote that was because I do tend to smother the ones I love, and I love alot of people.  I tend to take away their independence a bit by trying to meet every need they may have.  All that does is create a person who needs.  The needs then never end, and it becomes a vicious, downward spiral.  Now, I didn't create every needy person that came into my life, but someone did.  Someone had to start them down that path.  Things that I've been going through lately have been reaching a point where they needed to be started down the path of being resolved, and I've been having a difficult time getting onto that path.  When I read that, I suddenly took a new look at myself.  For me, the journey down the road of neediness began when I was young.  We were always the poor relatives.  We were clothed in hand-me-downs, and ate what we could grow on the farm.  I never felt deprived, and there are quite a few people in that condition in this world.  But we started going to school with the rich peoples' kids, and suddenly, I became the poor kid.  I became the charity case.  As I got older in that environment, I learned about social stature, but we'll save that for another blog.  I grew up, moved out, got a job....but then I got married.  I married a needy man, a man who had been taught to need from the day he was born, and he sucked me right down in with him.  Why?  Because I had already been primed for that.  I had already, without realising it, seen what need was.  I didn't have a clear picture of it in my head yet, but the idea was there that some people were unfortunate, and I felt responsible for filling their needs, sympathising with them because of how I'd been made to feel in that school.  I didn't yet clearly understand that I had become needy, and that I expressed that need by helping others to fill theirs.  It was a bit co-dependent, I suppose.  When my marriages broke down, in each case, I had given so much to the marriage, had put every resource I had into filling my husbands' needs, that I had no resources with which to help myself.  I had to rely on the charity and kindness of others.  Both marriages were a repeat of that cycle, and each one was worse than the first.  The second marriage was so violent and abusive that I was required to flee again and again, each time without resources, each time needing to beg for help.  I forgot what it was like to work, to pay my bills, to do anything for myself.  I became needy.  Now, there are current needs that I have which are legitimate.  We do all have legitimate needs.  However, what this statement caused me to wonder is if sometimes in life, we let neediness become a habit.  It can become so deeply ingrained into us that without realising it, we lose the ability to think for ourselves.  We lose the ability to do things for ourselves beyond the reasonable.  Sometimes we all need help.  Due to illness or disability, some of us will always need a little more help than others.  Sometimes, though, what we need is to take a step back and look at what we've become in life.  If all we ever do is ask for help, why is that the case?  Is it really a need or has need become a habit?  If it's really a need, then so be it.  Life can be difficult, and we all need help from time to time, no matter how high up in life we may be.  If it isn't, maybe it's time to develop some new habits. 

It's interesting to me how life can sometimes unfold.  It's all about timing.  I'd returned the astrophysics books that I was enjoying to the library, because I never had anyone to share the subject with.  Being unable to share all of the wonderful things I was learning somehow dimmed my enthusiasm.  Now, I have just learned that my new downstairs neighbour shares my love of the subject!  I've now got to dig out the notes from the books, and I might end up going back to the library for the one that I was in the middle of.  However, if I'd known he was coming, I never would have returned the books, and would be further along in my studies than I am now.  

I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.  "If I'd only known" is something quite a few of us say, and quite often, at that.  Perhaps it would have been better for me to continue to study.  Perhaps if I'd focused on hope rather than on hopelessness, I'd have been ready for this instead of scrambling to get ready for this.  We tend to give up, and it seems that just after we do, the thing comes along that we'd given up on ever seeing.  Like love that shows up when you've given up looking for it, things unfold at the time that's right.  That right time is rarely early enough for us.  There's a certain element of strength and courage needed to continue to hope in the face of all the odds against hope.  There's a certain amount of vision required to see the brighter day on the other end of the darkest tunnel.  

There's more needed for us to reach the end of that tunnel than we ourselves can do, and that's where the ultimate courage comes in for each and every one of us.  We have to trust.  As babies, we trust everyone and everything, but life teaches us gradually to trust no one, to believe in nothing.  Then, life teaches us the ultimate lesson.....facing ourselves and finding the courage to reach out and trust again, this time bridging a canyon of learned fears, facing the blackness that lives within us and that is more consuming than death.  Just as with everything else in life, it unfolds at the right time for it, and we find in that right time just the person we needed.  It's up to us to reach out and grab the opportunity before it passes, to have the courage to have hope rather than giving in to hopelessness.  If we can do that, we can do anything.  Crossing that bridge, facing down that blackness and reaching out for hope tests us to our limits and takes us beyond anything we ever thought we could do.  That's when we discover what we're really made of.  Once we've done that, no one will ever have power over us again.  Timing is everything.  Watch.  Hope.  Grab with both hands and hold on tight.