Who Shows Up for the Woman Who Always Shows Up?

I wanted my baby sister to know she had somebody.

She was in the hospital after a car accident. We don’t have our parents or elders around to do that for us. I was scared of the drive, but I went. I wanted her to feel loved.

While showing up for her, I found myself wanting somebody to show up for me, too.

I felt guilty admitting that. She was the one in the hospital. I’m not asking her to account for what’s missing in my life; the visit brought me face-to-face with it.

I could hear myself correcting the thought as soon as I tried to say it. I wanted someone willing to sacrifice for me. No … I didn’t want to say it like that. I didn’t want to want somebody else’s discomfort. I wanted the care that I associated with their willingness to go through some trouble for me.

Because I do go to some trouble. I’ve housed and fed people who needed somewhere to go. I’ve cared for other people’s children, sometimes for months. I like being loving. I like being someone who helps. My own needs don’t stop while I’m meeting somebody else’s.

About a year ago, I passed out while getting dressed to go to the hospital. The paramedics picked me up off my bedroom floor.

I’ve been hospitalized twice in the past five years. Both times, I lay there alone.

I’ve always been the source of relief, but never the one relieved. That’s how it feels.

I wonder if people have learned to expect it because I keep making myself available. I endure something, then something else; eventually, enduring seems to become my part in the relationship. I’m the strong one. I can take it.

I can see where I’ve allowed too much. But I don’t want every conversation about the care I haven’t received to become another conversation about what I should have done differently.

Sometimes I want someone to notice that I’m hurting without first asking how much more I can handle.

I’ve wanted the kind of care I was giving so badly that giving more seemed like the best available way to ask for it.

That’s hard to admit; it complicates the flattering version of me who only wants to help.

I do want to help. I also want to be loved. And I don’t always know where one feeling ends and the other begins.

I want to experience unconditional love.

Not permission to hurt each other endlessly. I want someone who can see my imperfections and decide to stay; someone who can tell me when something hurts and expect me to do better. I want both of us to have that.

I want acceptance. I want to stop constantly bending and contorting into whatever version of me is easiest for somebody else to swallow. I don’t want to be used and discarded. I want to know that there is something about me that makes someone want to stay, even when I’m not making myself useful to them.

I want to be enough while I still have things to work on.

I don’t mean only by a partner. I think we put so much hope into romantic love that friendship can start to look like something we do while waiting for the real relationship to arrive. I want affection and support in my friendships, too. I want people in my life who know me, and I want to know them beyond what each of us can manage to post or explain in passing.

Then there is the part I keep circling back to: how I treat myself when nobody else is there.

I can say to someone else, with complete conviction, that she is worthy of care just because she exists. She doesn’t need to be impressive. She doesn’t need to have accomplished anything that day. Then I turn toward myself and start attaching conditions. Once I’m more confident. Once I’m more grateful. Once I’ve figured out what’s wrong and fixed it.

I caught myself doing that in the same recording where I was telling somebody else she didn’t have to earn love.

Same mouth. A few minutes apart.

I wish noticing the contradiction settled it. It hasn’t. But I can hear it now, and I can question it instead of letting it pass as common sense.

I’m glad I went to see my sister. I wanted her to know she wasn’t alone.

I want to feel sure that I matter to someone, even when I have nothing to offer but myself.

I want somebody to show up for me.