Need

I had a realization coming in to work on the bus this morning.

It's ok to need people.

Needing people is not the problem that I have always been told, by other people, that it is.
All the new-agey spiritual types have a thing about neediness, and tell you it's wrong, but you know what, we are designed biologically and emotionally, to need others. We aren't Snow Leopards, we don't abandon our parents as soon as we can fend for ourselves and go off into the mountains by ourselves to become solitary predators. (Well, maybe some of us do, but..)

We are social. Mankind has always lived in social groups. There's a reason for that, it's best for our survival, emotional and otherwise.
I have always tried SO hard not to be needy, not to be dependent on others, on men, or whoever. Always seen it as a major weakness. And I've bought it, listened, when other people have tried to tell me it's not cool, too. And what has happened, is I have isolated myself as a result of my fears about it. I have created the very thing I've been most afraid of. In isolating myself, I've made myself more emotionally needy than if I hadn't tried to be so independent.
I tried so hard never to 'need' Ex.  I made damn sure that he could never really connect with me, or take care of me. I didn't want him to. So he never could. So I blamed him for 'not being present with me'. It was me. I did it. I cut him out, or, at the very least, manifested a relationship to be in, where his pattern was just like mine. He wanted to care, and didn't know how. I wanted to be cared for, and didn't know how.

I can't isolate myself from E in that way. I can't repeat that pattern. It is ok to need him. It has to be. Even just as an experiment in doing something different from what I have done so far.  I have to let E in. I haven't really done that, I can feel I've been keeping him at bay, protecting myself, even telling him I don't need him, because I'm scared to really admit that I do, or admit my emotional vulnerability. 
I want to come in from the cold.  I've been stuck outside all my relationships looking in through the window, wistfully wishing I could allow myself to be a part of it, and not be scared to need.

I spent about 2 hours on the phone last night with several girlfriends. S, included. She is always SO determined to be independent and not need men. I think that's what clued me in.  I need to stop listening to her opinions so much. She isn't as emotionally clued in as she would like to think she was.  I think I saw that last night. She's fragile.  She has issues.  She's making her issues my issues, when they aren't always. I need to be clear with myself about that, and see when it's her stuff, not mine, that she's talking about.


Ex sent my mum a book through the mail, it arrived yesterday. She emailed me to tell me. I got really angry. He can't email me, or get in touch with me, so he goes through my mum? He knows full well that she will tell me.  I saw and felt it as his manipulation. I emailed S about it. She backed me up.
He has to have a motive, surely, an agenda..  We both know what a manipulator he is, so there has to be some underhanded thing going on. What does he want?

What if it's more simple than that? Perhaps I read too much into the book, pardon the pun. Perhaps it was a simple gesture of friendship, and I let S tell me it was manipulative and a fucked up thing that he did. Perhaps he just felt a need to connect. Perhaps it was simple, and I should just feel happy he reached out, in whatever way he did it.  Whatever his motives, it really stirred me up. I have very mixed feelings about it. Total relief, and also total sadness.  Perhaps I'm hiding behind my anger and hurt, and I should come out now. Perhaps. Or perhaps he needs to realize he can't just send my mum stuff and it all suddenly be happy and ok again. He fucked up, and he needs to own it, not just send my mum a book. That's a small and sideways gesture, I need a bigger one. 

I don't know. I just don't know any more. All I know, is I love him and miss him terribly, and I want to reach out to him, and I don't know how, I'm too scared and too sad still.
I wish he would contact me directly, so I don't have to make that move.