Needy

"When you ask how I am, it comes across as needy and it is unattractive!" ...those words hit me like the discharge of a skunk. Putrid, overwhelming, and foul, the words filled the air with a smell not easily escaped. I sat stunned for a second from both shock and amazement.

Before me sat a person I had spent fifteen years of my life loving, accommodating, coddling, and appeasing. When difficult times arose I would bravely face the problems alone and carry the load no matter how heavy or painful, all the while protecting and shielding this person with what at times seemed my last breath. When conflict came I helped them, by coaxing and pleading, to communicate and enable change to emerge. I supported, cared for, stood up for, cooked for, cleaned for, created a loving sense of family for, and nursed them when they fell ill. I couldn't tell you how many hours I spent helping them with their school work and problems in life. I dealt with moodiness, whining, immaturity, and at times extreme selfishness.  I was always there putting them way above my own needs and wants. And I am the needy one?

Thoughts raced through my head as my memory shouted its' records. I wondered how it is in this twisted mind that has been in need of so much love, patiences, maturity, and long suffering  that that label could even be uttered in regard to someone else. Was it self hatred that loathed any one who dare care? Was it a poor upbringing that led to this delusion? Or has society become so tarnished that to care is needy and to be selfish is strength?

As time has passed, I often think of the look on their face, the disdain in their voice, and the sneer on their lips. Their words were dipped in selfishness and neediness. The need to tear down a good soul. The need to damage a good heart so their own feels more at ease. The need to control the world around them not realizing that if the world were to be as they deem, no one would care. Never once realizing that the selfish people in this world are truly the neediest people of all!

For they are the ones that need someone to tolerate them, to support them, look out for them, love them even though they may never get that love back. They need others to clean up their messes, wipe their brow, give them a break, shield them, and be a shoulder to cry on. Most of all they need someone they can trust! And believe me, no one selfish would do that for another person ever unless there was something they could gain.... and can you really call that trust?

And maybe this is the problem. Maybe if we gathered up all the truly selfish needy people in the world and forced them to live together, maybe at some point they would learn. Perhaps after dealing with other people who are truly needy, they would figure out what "needy" really is. If all of us who are the opposite of needy, the ones who care for everyone else, the souls who cry and suffer alone, the truly strong ones, were to stop throwing our pearls before swine, maybe then the swine would cease to be.

I do not know

I do know I am the extreme opposite of needy. I carry burdens and loads far heavier and painful then the world around me would ever know. And while I do this, I smile genuinely, laugh purely, love fiercely, protect my world with my life, and all often with a song in my heart or on my lips. I do not whine or complain, do not put my needs before others, and am loyal to a fault. I have been knocked about in this life many many times, yet I rise from the ashes still loving and kind.

Kindness despite mistreatment and misfortune takes courage and strength. Love even when betrayed and taken advantage of takes a heart pure and truly otherworldly. And a good soul surrounded by evil, heartache, and pain yet remains good and true takes a soul of unfathomable worth, for it is a soul that can not be bought or sold. All these are signs of strength and indipendance.

No dear soul, needy does not describe me!

It may describe you. It may describe the way you choose to see the world. It may describe many other people in this world. But you need to examine the truly needy souls in life. For they are not the ones that care despite their own needs. They are the ones who can not spare kindness or love for fear. They are the ones who lash out in immaturity and poison uncaring of the effects on the world about them. They are the sad souls who miss out on so much goodness right before them because of their yet unfulfilled destiny to evolve into the creatures God intended them to truly be.

So the next time my dear one you want to call someone needy, think long and hard about who and what that really means.