I don't want to be a burden

but i am (& so are you)

image via rawpixel

For someone who prides herself on being a low-maintenance person, my life has been anything but the past few years. At times, I have felt embarrassed by the seemingly nonstop onslaught of unpleasant or tragic or objectively horrible things that have taken place, growing increasingly hesitant to inform my friends of every subsequent calamitous occurrence, fearful they might start to feel I am becoming too difficult and laborious a friend to maintain. I don’t want to need help or emotional support. I don’t want to be an inconvenience. It’s uncomfortable for me to admit I am not entirely self-sustaining.

AND YET

intimacy thrives on our need for other people, friendship feeds on the vulnerability of letting ourselves be seen.

My initial instinct when shit gets hard is to disappear, go quiet, isolate until things improve. Which is a pretty ineffective way to deepen or maintain your relationships. I have been known to blame this bad habit on my extreme introversion and while I am, indeed, an intensely introverted person, this is most certainly not the whole story. Exposing my vulnerabilities and my less-than-perfect life still stirs up deep-seated fears of rejection or abandonment, I’m still terrified to be exposed for not having my shit yet figured out.

But also: what does this even mean? Whose shit and by what standards? And at what cost?

Being a person is really fucking hard. Even in the best of circumstances. And we live in a world that is actively (and increasingly, these days) making mere survival ever more challenging than it should or needs to be. We are a communal species. We are supposed to rely on one another. Myths about being self-made or having self-healed still run rampant, but they are delusions at best, intentional fabrications at worst, and also tools of shame, manipulation, and control. The if I can do it, you can too narrative is still incredibly pervasive, attempts to convince us we all have the same 24 hours (we don’t) and the same ability to manifest our reality (also no), and then to blame us if we fail or fall short of our aspirations.

I spent my 20s trying to self-help my way out of trauma. Which, to no one’s surprise (except maybe mine), DID NOT WORK. I was attempting to solve a relational problem with a highly individualistic solution, to address a somatic/nervous system situation through an almost purely cognitive approach. Turns out, you can’t mind-over-matter your way out of attachment wounding or positive-think your way through complex trauma. You can’t bootstrap your way to better mental health. (This is also why cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, so often falls short in these cases. It isn’t useless, but it’s not enough on its own.)

WE NEED EACH OTHER. And — despite what the pop psychologists, spiritual gurus, and wellness warriors online might tell you — we actually do owe other people something. What and how much will depend upon our relationship with them, but only the most privileged among us have the luxury of acting like they are indebted to no one else.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: YOU ARE A BURDEN TO THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU. So am I and I HATE IT. But it’s the reality of being in relationship. Being burdened sounds like a bad thing, but is it always? Does it have to be? Isn’t choosing to love someone, to be their friend, to support them through the inevitable heartbreak and the hard times and the grief, the ever-present uncertainty of being a person, also signing on to be burdened sometimes? Isn’t that kind of the point?

I don’t want my friendships to be convenient. I don’t want my friends to not have needs. I want to be privy to the worst parts and the ugly parts and the messy parts. I WANT them to burden me. With all of it. To interrupt my day with their frantic texts, call me crying, disrupt my carefully orchestrated plans with demands for my attention. I want my friends to put me out. If I don’t, then WHAT AM I EVEN DOING, you know?

If you want to be loved, you have to risk being rejected. There’s no shortcut or secret to avoiding this reality. The older I get the more I realize that building trust, cultivating intimacy, creating safety within our relationships isn’t just about showing up for our people when they need us to be there, it’s about allowing them to show up for us.

So, let yourself be a burden. It is, after all, how any of us are still here.

xoxo

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1. The End of Seriousness

2. Lost Women of Science: Lady Tan's Circle of Women — also, buy the book

3. Embarrassment Has Good Bones

4. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

5. The purity vortex

6. YOU DON’T HAVE IMPOSTER SYNDROME

“The medical establishment has long served as a tool for transforming resistance into illness, reframing rational responses to oppression as psychological disorders to be cured. 'Imposter syndrome' operates in this same tradition, though with more subtlety – it doesn't explicitly label resistance as illness, but rather encourages marginalized groups to interpret their own awareness of systemic exclusion as a personal pathology.”

Boom.

7. Thank you, THANK YOU, for being here.