I was 12 years old when Barbara Streisand’s song “People who need People” came out. It seemed to me that she was saying that needy people are actually lucky, and that baffled me because, for me, being needy was anything but! I felt inadequate and demoralized at all the obstacles I was facing with my vision issues and academic delays. Sure, I received the help I needed but I was always acutely aware of those who didn’t need the help that I did. I think getting past those obstacles put me on a path of independence and I became determined to be able to do “it” myself.
Now, over 60 years of being self-sufficient and willful, I feel proud of what I accomplished especially because that inadequate feeling I grew up with didn’t really go away, it just got covered up with accomplishments and it pops up unexpectedly when I go through difficult times. Like now.
My 6-year journey with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma has taken me through several treatments, remissions, and recurrences, the most recent recurrence much more debilitating than anything I ever experienced. Up until now I was able to endure the recurrences and remissions because I was strong enough to be able to function, learning life lessons and still being able to seek quality of life. I was getting better at enjoying remissions without the tension and awareness of waiting for that other shoe to drop. I secretly enjoyed friends and family telling me how they admire my strength, while I politely tell them they’d do the same.
But now I’m feeling weak and, as always, cancer takes away a lot but leaves lessons and insights behind for me to discover.
There are so many offers of assistance; all I need to do is ask. I hear offers of visits to distract me from my woes, and I hear different variations of “think positive” daily. I feel mixed about all of it. It’s easy to see their desire to help, their intentions come straight from the heart, but it’s often what they think I need. I remember once my elderly mother was knocked down by a bicycle rider and had to be taken to the hospital. My father rode in the ambulance with her and I met them at the emergency room shortly after. My mother was lying on the gurney waiting to be seen. My dad, so concerned, reached over and tried to re-arrange her broken arm. My mother winced silently but accepted his help. I said, as kindly as I could, “Dad, I don’t think that’s very helpful.”
“I know.” he said with loving concern, “But I have to do something.” This memory helps me understand how hard it is to bear witness and be compassionate without trying to fix anything. It’s what the helper needs more than what the patient needs, but I’m also seeing that it is not a selfish need, it comes from love and compassion.
I’m discovering how hard it is for me to accept help, stemming back from being so needy as a child. It’s embarrassing. Recently, as I was struggling to get to the drug store to pick up my prescription, I ran into an angelic neighbor who helped me. I was both grateful and embarrassed with the realization that one of the lessons cancer has to teach me is to learn how to accept, with grace, the fact that my physical state is currently incapacitating and that just because I am currently needy, it doesn’t have anything to do with my old issue of feeling inadequate. A lot of unlearning is in order to help me move through this lesson and accept this newest cancer recurrence with grace. When I saw this as my newest lesson, I had a vision of me walking down a path, physically frail, but looking peaceful, smiling, because I was moving through this journey surrounded by acceptance, love and light.
In this current cancer recurrence I find myself so exhausted, and that listening and socializing is as much of an effort as any physical activity. At those moments, I find the quiet to be peaceful as I surrender onto the comfort of the sofa, listening to meditation music. It feels like I am in this cancer cocoon without thought or distraction: it gives me a sense of who I am without all the roles I play in life. But then my well-meaning friends and family make offers to come visit, take me out in order to distract me, and I see another lesson looming. Their offers come with their passion, and if I’m turning down their offers, it feels like I am doing something wrong. I should need people like the song says but it’s confusing because despite disliking my neediness, I have also always been a people pleaser, and sometimes I’m compelled to agree to give them what they want, despite my desire for solitude. I am beginning to see that it’s ok to want solitude and that my people pleasing ways goes against what I need. I’m pleasing others at my own expense, following an expectation that we should all need people.
This brings me back to the song, I don’t want to need people, but when someone sends me their love and prayers, it does feel good to know that I am in the hearts of many and it has nothing to do with neediness. It’s about love, compassion and a sense of belonging.