Hi Tupp,
I loved Lollie's answer. So wise and warm.
I was stopped by your question because I was hit by the irony of it. It was a "needy" question. And I am the Queen of Need. If one needs something, and one ain't got it, one is "needy." Needy needy needy. It just fascinates me (in a frustrated way) that this has become the word it is today. Blech.
I wrote a lay sermon once that included this:
Loneliness is an inconvenient truth. Generally, loneliness gets a bad rap. It’s not a word you just sling around. You can say you’re so lonesome you could cry if you’re Elvis Presley or Roy Orbison or Bonnie Raitt, but nobody else gets away with it. It’s embarrassing. Sometimes it carries a whiff of something toxic. It’s almost like saying you’re unpatriotic. Loneliness is a very un-American emotion. Usually what comes right on the heels of naming it, if you even allow yourself to call loneliness what it is, is shame.
What if you just went around saying “I feel lonely” any time you actually felt that way? Right out loud. It doesn’t happen very often, does it? What holds us back from that simple piece of honesty? You can say, “I’ve got a hell of a cold,” can’t you? I know what holds me back. People might think: That person is…CLINGY. A WET RAG. DEPENDENT. CO-DEPENDENT. WEAK. Or the worst epithet of all, the most humiliating: NEEDY.
I think most of these terms are relatively new accusations, and that they come from lives that are too pressured and fast and ambitions that are too strenuous to allow us to encounter and abide with each other, most days of our lives, in the graceful rhythms of community.
Haven’t we all had some friend or acquaintance, sometime or other, say to us, “I’m depressed. I’m bummed out. I’m in therapy. I’m in one of the stages of grief. I had a panic attack. I’m an alcoholic.” It might be a sobering moment to share with someone, but it’s probably not a very rare one. Any of these admissions are more likely to come from someone we know, even someone we know very well, than the words: “I am lonely.” One of the most remarkable phrases I read in a self-help book that described a man who sounded pretty lonely to me was that he was “walking around with his umbilical cord in his hand, looking for an outlet to plug it into.”
Ow! What’s up with that? It sounds like perfectly reasonable behavior to me. Isn’t this the sort of world that occasionally makes you want to climb a ladder back up into the womb? Even when we’re running from one thing to the next, busy all day long with work and family or this cause or that one, aren’t there times when we’re just struck cold by another dire piece of horrible news? There are times when the state of the world is so overwhelming to talk about that we just don’t. We stand limply in place saying “How are you?” and answering, “I’m fine.”
Anyway, Tupp, I think your needs for reciprocal, satisfying relationships, and an adult flowering of your own, and less isolation, and a change in your social approach -- are all just excellent.
How the heck can we ever meet a need if we don't identify it first? When it's just floating around under the surface and we don't: 1) have permission to think about it directly and boldly, or 2) have mercy on ourselves if that need reveals vulnerability or imperfection... then it just lurks around as shame. Rotting everything.
Don't be ashamed of feeling needy, Tupp. It's how you feel sometimes. But trust that if you do some of these new actions, make new choices, try new places, and abide with your growth in kindness toward yourself, you'll feel it less acutely.
I still have big spasms of it. And I accept them. But the intervals between feeling toxic about myself are much, much longer. And that is perhaps good enough.
love to you,
Hops
