2.9.22 // Needs

My needs.
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I've always struggled to speak up for my needs.
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To really set boundaries, to know what my heart, body, mind, and soul yearns for.
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Because for so many years I have just tried to be what other people want me to be. It isn't even that they *need* me to be a certain way, it is just my perceived understanding of what they want.
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I still do that.
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Thanks to my therapy session last week, I resurfaced this old conversation because my old habits are still lingering in a new form.
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I'm starting to speak up for my needs but I also am starting to look to others to tell me what MY needs are.
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It comes from fear, fear of disappointing others, and an ease and familiarity of just being whatever or whoever that person needs. But it reinforces the behavior that I am someone who I am not.
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I have done a great job reinforcing the identity of myself according to others and trained people to see me as such. The authentic and true Liz is pushed down and when she does surface she isn't acknowledged or seen as "true" because again, I've taught others not to see her, understand her, or respect her.
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I am what you think I am because I let my behavior validate your thinking.
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Sticking up for myself has always been hard, but this behavior, this making myself a living ghost has to stop. That is why I'm writing about it here, it's my ownership of my own truth.
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I am a fluid and changing human.
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And I hope by owning my true self and not just the identity that I (and you) have carefully crafted, you too will release yourself from the binds of imaginary expectations of others.