We all have needs, right?
I mean, all of the books on healing, on trauma--even the good ones--talk about getting your needs met. It is, I think, the passive voice of that phrase that bothers me. The getting your needs met--as in, what, my car is meeting my needs? my rug? my kitchen table? what exactly or who? If we're talking about a job, let's say a job. If we're talking about an other, let's say our lover, spouse, husband, wife, mistress, whomever. I think, in some ways, it's letting us off the hook--that phrase--that "getting our needs met," and if it's not letting us off the hook by encouraging us not to identify the "who," well then, it's letting the who off the hook. And that ain't so cool.
Okay. so drop that freight train of thought for a milisecond. Maybe it's the word "need" I'm bothered by. I have been so goddamn needy all of my life until now, all of my life has revolved around needing and letting need block wanting, desiring, but also, the life-and-death nature of pathological need served to fuel a devilish passion and assasin-like aim in me. How powerfully ironic.
Yes, so I am seeing, now--not that it makes a bit of difference to you, except in the way that standing across the street and looking at your own house, then standing on your own side of the road and looking across at the neighbors makes a difference; let's say perspective then--that need blocks want. And that if you can get to a place where you can lessen the reins of life-and-death terror-invoking child-within need, okay maybe that's setting boundaries, I don't know, but if you can get to that place, it feels very much like someone has slipped some very dark sunglasses from your eyes, and the world looks more yellow, really. An intensity of color, you notice, by broadening your fixed focus to include, say, ten feet to either side of you. Or me, more specifically. In other words, it has its good points.
I don't know where I'm going with this, except to say these new hues of what I think just may be mental health are jolting when they come, as are the setbacks when they bust in and say, "HEY! you are so fucking weak," and I say now, more and more, you know what? Fuck off.
What comes with these mini bites of self understanding is a parallel understanding of others which feels almost paranormal. And a love for self and others that feels more genuine and more real.
I think this is healing.
