When the Need Arises
As the hills of Cumbria and Lancashire disappear behind me through the train window, Lana Del Rey’s Bluebird urges me to “find a way to fly” through my headphones. I think about women and birds and the feminine urge to disappear above the trees. I have never felt a particular affinity for birds, yet two of my three tattoos are birds: a purple phoenix on my back, and pages of a book transforming into birds in flight on my collarbone.
I see birds everywhere these days. Feral parakeets eating cherry blossoms in Highbury Fields, the decapitated owl gargoyle above the Cypriot shop near Arnos Grove, perpetual pigeons haunting train stations from Euston to Penrith. Since the recent discovery that I, uh, really like birds (so to speak), I am constantly in flight. Simple parts of my life have become complicated, and all I can do is walk 20,000 steps a day to process the upheaval. I’m not going to talk about breakups and late-onset lesbianism here. Instead, I’m going to talk about motion and neediness and the stories we tell ourselves.
A couple of weeks ago I read an article called The Crane Wife, by CJ Hauser. The article interpolates the author’s experience of leaving their fiancé 10 days before their wedding with stories from a fieldwork trip researching cranes. The article struck such a strong chord with me that I sent it to half my friends. I have thought about it often since. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking article that I won’t attempt to summarise in one sentence, but it deals with themes of neediness and care, and what it means to belong to ourselves and the people around us. I sent the article to friends who felt like they had given too much of themselves in relationships. But for me, the theme of neediness is something I have primarily dealt with in friendships. Feeling like I’m too much, too emotional, too needy. The thing about ending your four-year relationship shortly after moving to a new city is that you really need your friends. I was so scared that I wouldn’t have a strong support system in London, but I discovered the opposite to be true. I have had some of the most beautiful and powerful friendship moments of my life over the past couple of weeks. I have felt loved and seen and emotionally held by friends I’ve known for seven months and friends I’ve known for nine years.
Friendship can’t exist without neediness. For my final three years in Glasgow, I was a basically a hermit. I had my job, I had my then-partner, and I had my determination to get into a PhD programme. What I did not have was friends. I had people in the city that I could have reached out to, and for whatever reason, I didn’t. My closest friends were gone, and I didn’t know how to say “I need you” to everyone else. Whilst moving to London did cure my depression, it didn’t remove my anxiety around being too needy. I was determined to be moderate, to develop friendships at a measured pace, to never come on too strong. Yet when I think of the times I have felt closest to my friends in London it’s when they’ve been ranting or crying or telling absurd jokes. Risk creates intimacy, and each time I see my friends’ vulnerability through their anger or frustration or weirdness, my affection for them grows. Every so often I think about how I haven’t said “I love you” to most of my friends in London yet. Maybe we’re not there yet, who knows. But there are moments when I feel it, when I’m so overcome with gratitude for these people’s existence – even if I know they’d roll their eyes or say something dumb if I tried to be that earnest with them.
I am in the process of learning to let myself be needy. I push through the feeling of awkwardness when I double-text my friends. I admit when I’m struggling. I go to an improv workshop for the first time in years. I show up to the world as my full self. Some of it is scary, some of it feels like breathing. As women, we are taught that neediness will be our downfall. But I have learnt throughout the lonelier parts of my life that my true downfall comes from isolation. Friendship is everything, connection is everything. Whenever I talk openly about my feelings, or write blogs about them for that matter, so many people tell me that they feel the same way. We are all needed, we all need each other.
Neediness is often conflated with clinginess, or seen as something pathetic and weak. I am needier than I have been in years right now, and I don’t see it as weakness. I have a need to talk to people and be heard. I have a need for hugs and physical affection from my friends that was less present before. But I am not a vessel to be filled, I am not here to take and take and take. I want to give; I want to be a receptacle for other peoples’ needs. When I think about the people I’m most anxious about being needy with, it’s those who don’t let themselves be needy with me. I don’t want the pleasantries and stock responses, I want to know something deeper than your favourite colour or surface-level opinions. I want to give and take in equal measure; I want to hear your rants and niche interests, your joys and disappointments. I want to know what you think, not what you think is polite. When that kind of dynamic exists, the fear around my own neediness fades. I don’t feel embarrassed to send you rambling voice messages, I don’t feel embarrassed to crave the sound of your voice in return.
Neediness, too, is a form of motion. A reciprocal dance between the empty spaces in each of us. My emptiness often comes down to a need to feel heard, to feel seen and seen through. For others, that neediness may take different shapes. Neediness prompts us to act. The idea of neediness being something weak and passive is so ironic. Every needy person I know has let it push them far beyond their comfort zone.
A couple of weeks into my PhD, I had my first real conversation with a now friend. We must have been in the same room on two or three occasions before that, but never spoken to each other. She asked me “What’s your story? Why are you here?” Oddly poetic compared to the formulaic “Why did you choose SSEES?” and “Where did you do your Master’s?” that everyone else had asked me that week. Most memories from those weeks are a blur by now, but that memory is vivid, a flash of hazel eyes, dark lipstick and a warm smile. A question that would later come to haunt me.
What is my story? Why am I here?
As an astrology girlie, I should have known that questions posed during the September/October eclipses would be answered by March and April. The seeds planted months ago would grow even if I forgot to water them. When you realise you’re a lesbian almost three decades into your life, the stories you’ve spent years telling yourself stop making sense. I am unravelling my life story, choosing which pieces to carry forward and which to gently archive. My history is unchanged, but the lens through which I perceive it is forever altered. When I ask myself what my story is now, I don’t see a certain future mapped out before me. I don’t yearn for traditional milestones or compulsory achievements. I want my life to be fun and adventurous and interesting. I want to be in motion, to travel and laugh and surround myself with friends. I want to do meaningful work, and I am setting the foundations for that with my PhD. I want a life where I never forget how to fly, a life that feels like it belongs to me. I am here to grow; I am here to learn new things about myself and the world. And I am here to love the people around me, neediness be damned.
My story, like the books tattooed on my collarbone, has found its wings.