the curse of "low-maintenance"

I think we've been wronged. Or caught on the "splat" end of the pendulum swing.

Hi, my name is Cathy, and I was raised to be self-supporting, self-sufficient, self-maintained, caught in the rip-tide of feminist agenda.

Today, in a totally unexpected moment in an innocent breakfast conversation, I commented back to my husband "and I'm so low-maintenance!"

And promptly burst into tears.

Low-maintenance, no-maintenance, self-sufficient - we can't be meant to live at that edge of things. I do have needs. There are times it is important to name them, project them, demand they be met.

Not, of course, in the uber-bitchy drama queen non-stop style that my mother used, obviously.

But it hasn't been obvious.

After decades of therapy, proper individuation, emotional independence, blah blah blah, I thought I had left that edge of "I'll never grow up like HER" long behind. Repsectfully discharged and buried.

And so it is. But here is the aftermath, the echoes of a pattern that has shaped my life, even as I manifest it in "healthy" ways.

And in this prolonged period of extreme neediness on the part of my husband (= new job chaos, etc), I'm seeing that I have driven any sense of my own personal needs so far underground that I forgot they belonged to me. And that I had no clear mechanism for owning them even in the easier days.

Low-maintenance. No-maintenance. No needs.

No more.

Might as well spend today in the meltdown, in the privacy of my own space. And lay to rest these honorable beliefs that I can do it all on my own: parenting, business-owning, house-running, heart-holding.

Better to honestly own what it is I DO need, and claim it for what it is. Doesn't have to be cloaked in the old squirmy passive-aggressive games of June Cleaver's day. Let's find the midline of this.

Maintenance required.