Need

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.

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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.