On having needs

(This is tangentially relationship processing, but is part of a much broader pattern in how I interact with the world, hence not being cut.)

I appear to be quite bad at noticing that other people have needs up until I can't meet them. So I will meet requests without noticing they've been made (or possibly without their being made at all, because I try quite hard to respectfully anticipate -- offer culture, I suppose, and also I suppose part of my efforts to pass for allistic) and will tick along quite happily, only occasionally feeling guilty for not doing enough for other people.

And then I will slam head-first into a hard limit - an "I can see it would make your life easier and more pleasant if I could do this but I absolutely can't", and instead of trusting that response I try to second-guess my self into oblivion, eliding our shared history. (What does it say about me if I can't even give them this? It's the only thing they've ever asked me for! Surely I could manage if I weren't so selfish!)

This does us both disservice, and is I suspect at the root of my finding it very difficult to trust that people mean it when they say I have value to them.

eta obvs if you interact with me in ways that lead you to believe the above is complete bullshit, please do say, coz that's useful data too!

[poem] paper boats

I think perhaps you do not understand
how I love you -- or, better, believe
that I could: but
I do, and I do, and I do.
I love you not as light, nor as water, nor as yearning
but as rock beneath my feet, against my back,
as certainty and surety, in all its meanings,
with all its histories.

(if my emotional landscape is verdant
it is because water cannot but well joyful upwards
along my faultlines, my
earthquakes-in-waiting)

(there are not words enough to give thanks
for the gift you gave in showing
how one might tireless trust me)



(
  so let my silence speak
  in stead
)

Insight in my turn

flippac says:

Care gives me something constructive to do with hypervigilance instead of looking for a fight I don't want.

And earlier I wrote about not perceiving people as having needs until I can't meet them.

Which on the one hand is the tired old story of measuring myself by failure rather than successes; and on the other is, as Flippa points out, a case of only perceiving threat.

Two things both at once.