I needed you to listen.
I needed to be treated as your equal.
I needed you to have patience and wait for what you wanted until the timing was better.
I needed you to take out the trash, not leave it sitting for 3 days until I took it out myself.
I needed you to let me rest and sleep instead of making your insomnia my insomnia.
I needed you to care about my comfort and contentment, too, and not assume your contentment was shared.
I needed you not to treat me like a puzzle to be solved or a machine to be operated by the right sequence of levers and buttons.
I needed you to believe me when I said I didn’t think you were being incompetent, that this was just how my body worked.
I needed space, and silence, so I could rest, unwind, recharge and create.
I needed to be needed less.
Now you aren’t getting what you need from me.
Now you ask what do I need from you?
What do I need from you?
I need you to listen, to hear.
I need you to see me – the real me.
I need you to give me space to rest and heal.
I need you to find a way to be whole with or without me.
I need you to help create an environment with order and cleanliness and beauty.
I need you to help me find a way to share space so that we are both able to find some contentment and comfort in our life together.
I need you to be willing to pass our disagreements, our needs and wants that are at odds with each other, through the view of a third party that can guide us towards better communication and understanding.
But most of all, I need you to have patience, because I’m in pieces, holding myself together with frayed strings, and I can’t give you what you need because what little energy I have is devoted to holding myself together, right now, and I can’t hold us together, too.
I need you to take your hands off those frayed strings before they break.