Being needed isn't being loved
But being needed feels good, right?
I’ve written about this at least five times since starting this Substack back in the summer of ’23.
(Can I say that? Summer of ’23? Or is that forcing a nostalgia that really ain’t nostalgic yet?)
But oh my fucking god, it’s still so real. And stays real.
Because people’s shite behavioural patterns are preordained, written in the stars, predictable af.
And my own reactionary behaviour is broaching perpetually disappointing territory.
Urgh.
Cool. Let’s get into it.
People who take, take, take — and then fuck off.
BUT THEN make the loudest U-turn imaginable.
I’m talking tyre marks on the road, tyre smoke so thick I’m choking on it (gagged, lol).
They come racing back like everything’s not just a-ok — but beyond a-ok.
Like our relationship was all joy and light, not a toxic vat of one-sided trauma dumping and emotional abuse.
Like... why you do that?
But do you want to know what I find the most insane?
The expectation for me to forget the fucking walking-on-eggshells existence I had to live through, as their presence continued to loom and spread like an infection.
No — actually, it’s not even forgetting.
To forget something is to acknowledge it once existed.
The real desire here is for me to behave as if the reality I’m citing —
the reality they created, where I was collateral damage to their self-destruction — never materialised.
The pain.
The sorrow.
The slow suffocation of their words…
But you can’t forget the aftershocks that continue to reverberate through your body. Each tremor, jolting a memory into focus.
There is no forgetting for me. Just coping. Adapting.
Crafting mechanisms to navigate the fallout that reappears in my daily life and makes me hate myself.
I don’t get the privilege of living in the fantasyland they’ve created.
It’s like we took molly together.
But they’re on a good trip, and I’m on a bad one.
Split screen:
Their side: pastels, rainbows, sparkles.
Mine: shadows, cracks in the pavement revealing molten lava underneath.
They see utopia.
I see a barren wasteland of broken promises and lost apologies.
And yet somehow, I’m expected to deny the darkness crawling up my legs — pulling me toward the flames.
As the soles of my shoes fray and melt from the heat, I’m meant to say it’s sunlight I’m feeling. That it’s sand between my toes.
Deny the nightmare.
Confirm the euphoria.
And rid them of accountability.
And yet, despite knowing the past is a preview of the inevitable, I still feel the pull to that connection.
Like I’m tethered to a parasite that flips between benign and malignant.
And I’m stuck in this either-or of being moments away from the infection spreading to my brain or, convinced I’m immune.
But maybe immune here just means numb.
So with all this vivid memory of depletion and collapse —
why do I still give in?
It’s self-harm.
Instead of hacking at my wrists or inner thighs with a solitary razor blade,
I maintain a connection that will destroy me.
A connection that cuts deeper than any overpriced, pink-taxed razor ever could.
But good news.
I’ve had a sufficient amount of therapy to understand the pull.
I see the play-by-play.
My worth, tangled in being needed.
So when someone shows me their emotions —what I think is their most vulnerable self (but is really just trauma-dumping dressed up as intimacy) something in me lights up.
That itch in my brain says familiar.
And familiar means safe.
So off I go.
Fixing. Supporting. Holding space like it’s my duty.
Because if they need me, then I must be special.
If they open up to me, I must have value.
Right?
I’ve been learning how to stop being a narcissist’s dream.
It started with understanding that being needed is not the same as being cherished, respected, loved.
And the latter wouldn’t require you to burn yourself to keep anyone else warm.
And even if it did —
if the person loved you,
they wouldn’t hold your third-degree burns in their hands like they’re entitled to support at the expense of your demise.
And if you set a boundary to protect yourself from hurt
but that person wants your pain…
Well, no one who respects you will be sad that they can’t hurt you anymore.
