2024-03-06 What really are my needs?

I struggle to have my needs met. I mean, I do my best to have my needs met if I can, but the problem I often have is I'm not exactly sure what my needs are. They can vary. I think this is what I want or this is what I need to happen, but it can change or I can come to realise, oh, maybe I don't. Boundaries have always been an issue with me. Ever since I was a kid, my mum brought me up to have no boundaries so that she could, if she wanted to just walk into my bedroom, she would just do so. She wouldn't knock on the door. There'd be no respect and I just believed that that's how things worked. Even as a grown-up, not too long before she died, when I was staying with her and helping her deal with her cancer, she would still want to walk into the room I was living in as a living carer. I had to actually put a lock on the door to stop that from happening. Nothing had changed. And yet, maybe it has something to do with it, but what are my needs? Sometimes I think I know what I want and then when I go to get it, I'm not sure. I think I like the idea of it, but when I'm actually in the moment when I might acquire it, I'm not sure. I struggle with the idea of desire, to want something. And I get caught up in that quite a bit, normally around the food area. I'm pretty good. I've dealt with an awful lot of the things that used to cause me a problem in the past. Food is still an issue, but it's a work in progress. And examples of wanting something that, when I get it, doesn't satisfy, happens regularly. And yet the thought of it, the idea of it, still entices. It's very rare for me to feel satisfied from giving in to a desire, even a simple one like that. Obviously we all have need to be comfortable, to be at the right temperature. I get to be alone, which seems to be very good for me. I have access to the best drama, documentary films, stuff. I get to watch things. Great. I've noticed lately though, while there are still some good things around, there are fewer and further between in a sense. I'm very fussy, because I have access to good stuff, but I have to be careful not to eliminate too much and have nothing left. But what are my needs? I can pare it down to basics. You know, I need food, I need water, I need shelter, I need heat, especially in the winter. I need clothing. I do need company from time to time. I don't get it very often, but I've learned to be okay with that. I can't really seek it out, I don't really make it happen, and I'm sure in many ways that gives the impression to others, most others, if there were people who would be happy to spend time with me. That I'm not interested, when it's usually the opposite. I am interested, I just can't do anything about it. The only person, there's only one person who knows how to deal with me, so that I don't have to try to make something happen, and I can trust her to just do things when it's right for her that works. She's very unique in that respect, but apart from that, through my own inactivity, I'm not engaging with people, I'm not in groups or clubs, I don't meet up, except on a Tuesday evening meditation, and that's nice, and I'm quite happy to leave. If there's no reason to stay, if I don't feel like I want to socialize, or it's cold and I want to get back and get to bed, something like that. Sometimes I don't go. I think, oh, the weather's a bit, I don't really want to leave, and it's my only two hours a week when I spend time with other people, and yet sometimes I just don't go, I feel lazy or whatever, and I can feel a bit bad about it. I regret it a little bit. I should have made the effort. It's easier in the summer, but still, I'm not sure that I make the right decisions sometimes. It could be signs of depression. I may be experiencing depression. I know that things come in phases and waves, and this too will pass, and suddenly it's all forgotten. I might have talked about it, like I'm doing now. Having done so, somehow it feels lighter. I then eat something or watch something or do something, whether it's nice, I go for the walk, whatever it is, and I don't feel the same way. At this moment, it's coming up to taking van to garage to be annually checked. Last year was dramatic and difficult and challenging. I'm hoping it won't quite be like that. I'm hoping it won't be like that at all, but there's a feeling of anxiety, a pressure of having to do something I wouldn't do, having to make an appointment, having to go, having to hope that the weather's not too bad, that I can get out of my spot easily and put the cones down and get back into it. There's all these things that I think for many people is not an issue, but for me is an issue. I'll be very happy when it's over and things are sorted and I can forget about it for another year, but that doesn't mean that just like last year, just on the way to the appointment, something broke in the van and I had to have a whole palaver of issues. What are my needs? To keep things simple, but then I am also reluctant and resistant. I want to keep things familiar and samey. That's easy. But then there's also a part of me that wants difference and change and unexpected surprise to feel good and connected. I still like that. I just don't get to have much of that and I've just accepted that. I've got used to it. I don't desire it. I don't seek it, but I can still appreciate it when it happens. I don't know. What are my needs? When you really come down to it, I have to keep things simple, even if I was of a mind to acquire things, which is what we're all supposed to do, consume. I've got nowhere to put them. So the very lifestyle I live stops that, even if I didn't do that naturally myself anyway. Unlike before when I was living in a room in a shared house, I knew I can't have stuff because one day I'm going to have to move it and I can't carry it as it is. So I can't acquire more. A van is slightly different because I'm like a snail with my own shell. I don't have a great deal of room, but it's not overflowing and everything is in a very ordered state. But I dare say there's room for a few more things. If they were needed, I just don't want it. I don't even want what I have. My needs in many ways are to have less, and yet I can't really do less because I need these things. To give it all up, to become a monk and go and live in a monastery, ideal, in an ideal world, I would like to try, but I don't think I can because too much would need to change for me to do so and I might not be able to go back and I might feel like I want to. So I'm in my little cell and I have to make the best of it. I've got to get on with it. It's just how it is. So my needs are just to be at peace in the moment, the best I can be, day by day by day, sometimes hour by hour. Life can be difficult, but yet I can also go, just like other people experience, but I can also go through long periods where I am just in a state of contentedness, that there's nothing pressing on me, there's no responsibility, there's nothing I have to do, barring simple things that are acceptable and sometimes I can take that for granted because it's so easy. And then life comes along and says, OK, well then how about this? And now I wish to have the easy back. It's complicated. Maybe it's always complicated. Maybe I've always been like this. I don't know, I don't remember. Certainly not being anxious and struggling with life like I am, but then it might come out of the choices I've made to live like this. It's conducive to it. My mental health suffers. I just don't notice it so much because I'm not challenged by life. I found a way for a long period of time not to have to deal with it, but when I do have to deal with it, boy does it reveal itself to be difficult for me. I don't know what the answer is. There might not be an answer. I'm doing the best I can, the best I can come up with. It might not be the best for me, but it's the best I can come up with until such time as it changes. Or I change it. I don't know how or to what, in what way, but things do have a habit of changing and so what else can you do but carry on until that happens?