Litter

My Grandpa wrote to me – one of my gift letters and I’ve kept every one knowing that someday I’ll have to reread the things he’s said. But he wrote to me, “There is absolutely nothing I need from anyone anymore. So much of my energy is this life of mine; for so many years was based on neediness – on deciding what I ‘needed’ from others … I clearly and freely want and would like ‘things’ from others and I am free enough, strong enough, centered enough, loving enough, peaceful enough to know that … I can/will make it without need or dependency on others. You also can access that power and freedom – you often already have.”

I think on some level I have accessed that power and freedom in myself. And on many levels I haven’t. Not yet.
There is a great distinction for me between the “need” and to “like things” from other people.
The need becomes tangled in everything from going to lunch to sitting alone by a window. It searches for a host, latches on and then pumps in my desire to be seen, accepted, known, held, remembered.
“And how does it make you feel when you get what you need?” He asked. It makes me feel vulnerable, desperate, pathetic, 12.

Our minds have dirty patterns. Our minds play dirty tricks. And I’m not entirely sure why that is? My mind does most of my rejections – far more than the people I’m actually imagining doing the rejecting. And some days I’m swimming against my insecurities just to keep myself breathing, functioning. Those days, mostly, I turn off the outside world knowing that whoever walks across the threshold might get a huge wave of “Rachel’s shit.” And most of the time the rash of insecurities will clear up with time. But I am tired of them. I’m tired of the needing. I’m tired of going back to times when I felt unseen – the memories that have scarred themselves into thinking “it’s who I am.”
We are all snakes. We all shed our skin more than we realize. My hope is that all the things I’ve felt on the surface lately will fall off. I’ll hear them scuttle down the street behind me like litter in the wind.