I also had this needy little girl problem you describe. The needy little girl still wanted too much for years — from men, from my mother, from my friends. I didn’t understand why she was so relentless. But I also really, truly craved reassurance and support and love from someone else — the kind of love that takes all of your lumpy wrongness and says “All of this is just fine, it’s great, I will love this forever and ever and ever!”
Personally, I think it’s highly embarrassing and also totally OK to ask for that kind of love out loud from another person. But you also have to know that very few people are 100% willing to give it to you, particularly if you don’t seem to truly believe that you’re worthy of it yet.
So this is where you start: You resolve to do this for yourself. You resolve to say, “It’s OK that I am so fucking needy. It’s natural and real and it’s just who I am, really. Lots of people are like me. Lots of people feel this way.” Then you picture your terrible needy self and instead of saying I WILL LOVE HER (which is a little hard to do, honestly) or SOMEONE WILL LOVE HER (which borders on a kind of ego fantasy that’s inherently escapist) instead you say “I have compassion for this needy little girl.”
Compassion. You will make room for her. You will observe her angry flailing and have empathy for it. You will commit to standing up for her, because she’s never going to leave. She’s always here. Why? How did you get her, anyway? Why will she be here even when you’re very old and you should feel much stronger and more sure of yourself? I don’t fucking know, but she’ll be here, trust me.
Part of your struggle lies in understanding and accepting that some basic troubled seas won’t turn calm no matter how great everything in your life becomes. The truly strange thing, though, is that once you stop asking other people to love that needy little girl and you treat her with true, abiding compassion all by yourself, and you let her take up a little space in your heart, she’ll bring you some pretty amazing gifts. She’ll make you see other people through compassionate eyes. You will be able to put other people first more often than you can manage right now. You’ll start to become a generous person — generous to the core. You’re already probably on that path, but you’ll feel that way much more often.
She’ll help you to feel more passionately. Instead of doing these intellectual mind puzzles all the time, moving a little Rubik’s Cube around in your head all day long, you’ll simply walk around feeling your feelings without trying to fight them. Your shame will be replaced by a deep sense of peace (a lot of the time, anyway!). When you feel jittery and unlovable, you will remind yourself, “I am worthy, exactly as I am right now. I can take up space. I don’t need to change a thing.”
It’s sad, isn’t it, how many girls and women land in the same place? We don’t even feel like we deserve to whine about it. We don’t even feel like we deserve to love ourselves. But we can feel compassion for how long we’ve been in this state, conflicted and neurotic, wondering when we can stop pushing on walls, wondering when we’ll find the secret trap door to a calmer, better, happier life.
There is no trap door, no secret passageway. You just have to look with clear eyes at who you are right now: Totally strange and imperfect and real. Nasty and angry and confused and worried and misshapen and fucked to the core and hopelessly sublime. You get to move forward from here exactly like this. You don’t have to be smaller or more brilliant or smoother or prettier. You can just be what you are. You wake up in the morning and say, “I won’t try so hard today. I will let myself be who I am. I don’t have to fix anything.”
People will leave again. Rejection is everywhere. By having some compassion for your current state of being (without expecting more), by having some appreciation and even love for your imperfect present, by refusing to twist yourself into a pretzel for approval that never comes, you will not leave yourself again. As long as you don’t abandon yourself, as long as you tell yourself, “I am with you, as you are right now, no matter what,” then you can’t get left again, not really. You might be alone but you will not be left behind. “I am still here,” you will say. “I will always be here. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
You don’t have to return to the same old stories that only serve to stoke your longing and your melancholy. No one has seen you clearly yet, that’s all. Some people can’t see much, even when they try. See yourself clearly. That’s all there is. Look at yourself with clear eyes, without demanding more, without asking for improvements. Look with clear eyes and say, “This is how I am.” Feel that in your heart. This is how you’re going to live from now on. Something in the air is shifting. You deserve to feel this good from now on.
Ask Polly: How Do I Stop Punishing Myself For Being Human?
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