Leaning into it

A friend once said to me, "We all need to feel needed. You need to allow yourself to need others the way they need you. When you trust another person enough to share, it makes them feel good. They feel needed."

Wow. That’s a lot of need. Question: How many of us can actually say we’re better at trusting someone else than being trusted by them? Anyone? I’m betting not so many of us. It’s fucking scary to count on others.

We know it feels good to the people we lean on that we’ve entrusted them with a piece of our struggle. We know that no matter how small our need, when we break through our own walls we help to tear down the defenses of those we’ve called upon. As such, we are doing that relationship a service. To trust someone, and to reciprocate that trust, it's one of the most beautiful parts of our human experience. Still, we don’t lean into others willingly or easily, do we?

If you are anything like me, sometimes it's not about the basic need, or about sharing too much. It’s not even about whether or not you trust the person you have shared with and/or leaned on. Sometimes, it's about questioning how we feel about what we've shared. Sometimes, we haven't totally worked it out in our own heads yet. So, sometimes, if/when we put something out there, or sometimes, if/when we lean on someone else, before we've thought it through, we feel like we've exposed our self.

Put simply: We feel like we've opened up our innards for surgery without anesthesia. The tricky part is, we often don't know we weren't ready to leap, to lean, or to share, until after we've cut ourselves open and then think, "Fuck. I'm kinda bleeding here."

But, that's the thing. Life is life. It is a leap. That's the beauty.

And, we can do it alone, never sharing or leaning, never leaping forward or letting others in. We can do our best to make sure we never bruise or bleed. Or, we can do it together, sharing, leaning, loving, learning, and sometimes falling, but always getting back up because we have each other to lend a hand.

If this post seems like in any way I am appreciating the friends, the family, in my life again, and relishing in the fact that I have the kind of love in my life, the kind of people, who help me remember I don't have to do it alone, then I'm okay with being transparent.

If I didn't have people to lean on, I'd look for a way to stick a drill in my ear.