Need

My mother has a few stories she tells me over and over again. These stories are my “baby” stories...stories from when I was just adopted. Barely four years old, I’m barely a baby. But these are the only stories I have. 

When my foster mother was alive, I thought it would be too much to ask her to remember another foster kid’s story. I didn’t ask her when I learned to walk. Or what my first word was. I knew it mattered, but I was too afraid she might not know the answer. Or that she would know the answer and I’d realize just how important she was to me before she ... well, before she wasn’t. 

So when my mother tells me stories I listen. Sometimes I roll my eyes and question why she has to tell the story about me peeing my pants. Or when I mistook flies for birds and completely had a melt down in the front yard. But deep down inside I cherish every story she tells me. No matter how many times she decides to tell them. I can always figure something out about myself through them. 

When my parents picked me up and brought me home with them, I sat in my mother’s lap that evening and shook. I didn’t talk for at least a month. Because I didn’t talk to my parents, when my mother took me to downtown Fargo, ND to shop, there on the corner, waiting for the light to change so we could cross, I wet my pants. The first few times my mother told me about my accident, I thought she was angry at me. I was potty trained. Why would I do such a thing? Through the years, her tone has changed. She understands that I wasn’t talking. To talk to my mother to tell her I had to go to the bathroom was, for me, much more dangerous than just peeing my pants in the middle of downtown. I didn’t know how to count on these strangers. 

Being vulnerable isn’t something I do well. My pride and stubborn nature combine and the results aren’t ever pleasant. My instinct is to close in and figure things out myself when things don’t go well. If I need someone, and I learn to depend on them, what happens if they aren’t there when I do need them? What if I like it too much and miss it too much when it’s gone, because of course old tapes and experiences tell me that good, safe feelings don’t last for long. 




Saying your fears out loud usually exposes them. I can barely write the sentences above without telling myself how silly I am. You don’t cheat yourself out of good things because of the possibility they might not last. That would be insane. The realist in me says that everything ends eventually. If I stopped doing or experiencing things because of that reality, then I’d experience nothing at all. 

So what happens when the person you’ve fallen madly in love with asks you to need them? Yeah. Exactly. You admit you need her. 

And let her in.