Being Needed and Being Cared About Are Not the Same Thing

Dear Friend,

Mama called me to vent the other day.

Somebody needed help with something. Mama agreed to help. One thing led to another, Mama got aggravated, and eventually my phone rang. This is not exactly an unusual occurrence. 😂

Mama and Deddy are helpers. Always have been. If somebody needs a ride, they'll take them. If somebody needs something from town, they'll go get it. If somebody needs food, they'll take them some. They'll use their own gas, their own money and their own time, and I've watched them help people when they really couldn't afford to be helping anybody.

It usually starts small. One favor. One ride. One errand. Then another. Then another. And before anybody quite realizes how we got here, helping somebody out has turned into my parents being responsible for pieces of another grown adult's life.

And when I say people get used to my parents doing for them, I mean USED TO IT.

There was a lady who lived down the road who had gotten accustomed to Deddy helping her with things. One day Deddy was out of town, on the road working, and she called him because she wanted some snacks and cigarettes.

Now Friend, she did not call Deddy because there was an emergency. She did not need medicine. She was not stranded somewhere.

She wanted SNACKS AND CIGARETTES.

And since Deddy WASN'T even there to go get them, she asked him to get Mama to go shopping for her.

And do you know what Mama did?

MAMA WENT. 😂

This woman managed to call a man who wasn't even in town and still get his wife dispatched to the store.

Friend, I love my parents dearly, but at some point we have crossed over from helping your neighbor into a damn concierge service. 😂

And that's what I'm talking about. There's a difference between somebody genuinely needing help and somebody getting comfortable with you always being the one who helps.

At some point I started wondering... where are all the people they carried through hard seasons? Where are the people they gave rides to, fed, helped, checked on and rearranged their lives for?

Hell, where are some of the people they're STILL HELPING NOW?

Who calls Mama and says, "I don't need anything. I was just checking on you." Who asks if SHE'S okay? Who says, "Do y'all need anything while I'm in town?" Who helps her carry the heavy things?

That's the part that gets me. Because sometimes the person everybody has always counted on becomes the person carrying something heavy herself. And she may not need another person asking her for something.

SHE MAY NEED SOMEBODY TO NOTICE HER.

I want to be one of those somebodies. If my parents genuinely need me, I want that phone to ring. I never want Mama sitting there needing help and thinking, "Well, I hate to bother her..."

Bother me. Call me. If you NEED me, I want to know.

But—and Mama knew there was a "but" coming 😂—I also need to be able to say, "I love you, but you can handle this one."

Because apparently I inherited the helper gene too.

I've got three kids I homeschool, Squatch has worked away from home for at least half of every year since 2007, there's a little homestead full of animals and I'm trying to build businesses on top of all of it. My life is full.

But if I'm being truthful, it isn't really about finding another hour in the day anymore.

I MENTALLY CANNOT CARRY EVERYTHING I USED TO CARRY.

That was hard for me to accept because I still WANT to.

I want to help Mama and Deddy. I want to help my friends. Hell, if somebody I barely know genuinely needs help and there's something I can do, I want to help them too.

That part of me hasn't gone anywhere. I'm still the person who, if somebody I love is truly in trouble, is coming.

Several years ago, Squatch and I were getting ready for bed one cold night when a friend called because another friend was drunk and needed somebody to get her home. It should've been a fifteen-minute favor.

Instead, we spent hours following her around town because she kept driving away every time we got her stopped. Sometime after two in the morning, we were sitting in the empty parking lot of a closed bar with somebody I loved threatening her own life.

We stayed. We finally got her out from behind the wheel. Squatch drove her car all the way to Florida, we got her somewhere safe, and then we went home.

And I'd do the important part again.

IF SOMEBODY I LOVE IS TRULY NEEDING ME, I'M COMING.

What I finally learned was that I can show up for the emergency without signing up for the cycle.

Those are two different things.

And in case you're wondering, the two people whose relationship drama got us out of bed that night eventually got married during COVID.

Because of course they did. 😂 I love them both. From over here. At my house. Where nobody is driving drunk. 😂

That's taken me years to learn—not how to stop caring, but how to stop making everybody else's life mine to manage.

Because I do the same thing emotionally too.

I'm the friend people call with their problems and their drama. I'll listen to the same story for the fourteenth time, give the same advice for the fourteenth time, already know they probably aren't going to listen to a damn word I said, and I'll probably still answer call number fifteen. 😂

But my circle has gotten a whole lot smaller over the years.

Not because people didn't show up and fix things for me. Most of the time they didn't even know I needed anything. I don't tell many people what's going on in my life, and I HATE asking anybody for help. I'm very much an "I'll figure it out myself, and if I can't figure it out, maybe it just doesn't need doing" kind of person.

So I can't get mad because somebody didn't help with something they knew nothing about.

BUT CHECKING ON ME IS DIFFERENT.

Eventually I got tired of relationships where my phone only rang when somebody else's life was on fire. You haven't heard from somebody in three months and suddenly—

"Hey girl..."

Four minutes later: Ahhh. There it is. We're not catching up. You need somewhere to put your shit. 😂

For years, I was that somewhere. I'd listen. I'd talk them through it. I'd give advice. I'd worry about them after we hung up. Half the time they wouldn't take the advice anyway, but that didn't stop them from calling the next time everything went sideways.

What finally started bothering me wasn't that they didn't come fix things for me. I wasn't asking them to. It was that they didn't seem curious about MY life unless they needed something from me.

You don't have to know I'm struggling to ask how I'm doing. You don't have to know something is wrong to call because you haven't heard my voice in a while. You don't have to fix anything. Sometimes I just want to know you thought about me when YOU WEREN'T IN CRISIS.

And I reckon that's another kind of helping we don't talk about much. Check on the person who always checks on everybody else. Listen to the listener. Ask the helper how they're doing—and stick around long enough to hear the answer.

Don't wait until they tell you they're struggling, either. Some people won't. Some people have spent so many years being the one everybody else leans on that they don't quite know how to turn around and say, "I'm having a hard time too."

Sometimes helping isn't fixing anything.

Sometimes it's calling somebody who has spent years answering everybody else's calls and saying, "I don't need anything. I was just thinking about you."

Lord, sometimes that might be the thing they needed most.

Eventually I stopped chasing some of those relationships. No dramatic confrontation. No twenty-seven-paragraph goodbye text. I just stopped being the one keeping them alive. And some of them died so quietly I almost didn't notice.

Turns out, when you stop watering a friendship and nothing grows, sometimes you find out you were the only one holding the watering can.

That hurt.

But it taught me something I wish I'd learned a whole lot sooner.

BEING NEEDED AND BEING CARED ABOUT ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

And wouldn't you know it, I married a helper too. 😂

Squatch gives people his time, his labor and whatever knowledge he has. He works away from home half the year and then comes home and volunteers with the local fire departments because apparently sitting his ass on the couch like a normal person never occurred to him. 😂

And when he needs help? He'd rather figure it out his damn self.

Well, hell.

I come from helpers. I married a helper. I AM A HELPER.

And I don't want any of us to stop.

I don't want to lose the part of myself that hears, Somebody needs help, and thinks, GO. I don't want Mama to stop caring for people. I don't want Squatch to stop running toward somebody who needs him. And I think about all those years Deddy was the man who'd pull over for a stranger because that's simply what you did when somebody needed help.

The world needs people like that.

BUT PEOPLE LIKE THAT NEED SOMEBODY TOO.

And maybe that's what's bothering me so much about Mama's phone call. After all these years of watching my parents show up for everybody else, I'M LOOKING AROUND NOW AND WONDERING WHO'S SHOWING UP FOR THEM.

And Friend, maybe that's worth all of us thinking about. If somebody carried you through a hard season, don't disappear just because yours got better.

If somebody is always answering when you call, every once in a while call when you DON'T NEED A DAMN THING.

If there's somebody in your life who always seems to have everything handled, check on them anyway.

They may not tell you when they don't.

And for those of us who are the helpers, we've got some learning to do too.

We have to learn to say no sometimes. Let capable people be capable. Don't rescue somebody so many times that you accidentally teach them you're responsible for their life.

Because every time we rescue a capable adult from something they could've handled themselves, sometimes all we've taught them is WHO TO CALL THE NEXT TIME THEY DON'T FEEL LIKE HANDLING IT.

That's not always helping. Sometimes that's enabling.

And Friend, if you're sitting on the other side of this letter—the side that always seems to have somebody who will fix it for you—I reckon this part is for you too.

Look at the people you call. Are they helping you through a hard season, or have you quietly made pieces of your life their responsibility? Do you ever ask the helper if THEY need anything? Do you return the ride? Bring them supper? Check on them? Or have you gotten so used to hearing yes that you stopped noticing what your yes costs them?

Kindness isn't a permanent subscription service. Helping somebody carry something heavy is not the same thing as agreeing to carry it forever.

And there's another side for us helpers too. If we choose to help, we need to give it freely. Don't help somebody today and pull the receipt out ten years from now.

DON'T KEEP A LEDGER OF LOVE.

A favor we're planning to hold over somebody's head for the next twenty years isn't much of a favor anymore.

And yes, Mama, that part was for us too. 😂❤️

I'm still learning all of this myself. I'm learning that wanting to carry something and having the capacity to carry it aren't the same thing. I can love somebody without solving every problem they create. I can show up for the emergency without signing up for the cycle. I can say no and still be a good daughter, a good friend and a good person.

I don't want to stop being a helper. I just don't want any of us to give so much away that there's nothing left when the people we love—or WE OURSELVES—truly need it.

So check on your helpers, Friend. Especially the ones who never ask you to.

And Mama... next time you get to favor number three, call me before we get to 973.

We'll practice saying no together. 😂❤️